The Völklingen Ironworks

On Saturday we decided to take a drive to Völklingen and visit the Ironworks, a World Cultural Heritage Site located there about an hour away near Saarbrücken. I had no idea what this place was - Dave picked this one out! It was a beautiful day so we packed a nice little picnic lunch and ended up eating it on the autobahn because guess what...we were stuck in a STAU!

We just enjoyed the beauty of the day as we made our way there.  The Völklingen Ironworks became the 1st plant from the heyday of industrialization to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.  For more than 100 years, the Völklingen Ironworks had shaped the lives of many 1000's of people.  Today, it is the only fully preserved ironworks from the 19th and 20th centuries and an extraordinary monument and sightseeing location.

In 1965 more than 17,000 people worked at the Völklinger Hütte .  It was the highest number of employees in the history of the works.  Now it's just a huge iron ghost town.  In 1975 the Völklingen Ironworks was affected by the worldwide steel crisis.  In 1982 the iron and steelworks in Völklingen and Burbach were amalgamated to become ARBED-Saarstahl and in 1986 the Völklinger Hütte blast furnaces were shut down.  It takes about 2-3 hours to tour through the massive 6000 meter plant and it was a great experience to be able to walk around and appreciate the vastness of the plant and the working conditions in the old days. It's hard to even image how HOT it must have been in some of the areas and what kind of conditions the workers had to endure.  The viewing platforms offer great views of the place as well as the town. 

The tour took us through 7 stations.  Various pics of all are in the pics.  The sintering plant, which is the world's largest, with enormous ventilators and sintering machines.  In the sintering process, residues from iron production were recycled back into the blast furnace system. 

Next is the ore shed where large quantities of ore were stored. Today exhibits and cultural events are held there.



Inside the ore shed

Station 3 is the burden shed, the "belly" of the ironworks where 12,000 tons of raw material (iron ore, sinter, scrap, lime, coke) were once stored.  The upper level is where railway wagons brought in the raw materials and the monorail cars were loaded up to go up to the blast furnaces.  Eight men filled each car-an extremely dusty and dirty job! 


The monorail cars



Next we learned the blast heating process and walked through the blast furnaces.  Every 2 hours the blast furnace was tapped (done by hand until later controlled by remote) 130 tons of molten pig iron flowed through the tapping launder into the car which in turn carried it to the steelworks.  The pig iron emerged from the tapping hole at a whopping 1400° C!  Yowsers!  "Foundry Fleas" or glowing splashes of iron jumped out of the tapping hole and burned holes in the foundrymen's clothing or their skin...can you imagine???



Part of the large blast furnace system

Station 5 is the Coking Plant where fire of 1300° C processed mineral coal into blast furnace coke.  The heat, smoke and gas created one of the most arduous work places in Ironworks but today it was turned into what is called "Paradise".



The coking chambers



Station 6 is the coal track - the inclined ore lift.  This track is how all 6 of the blast furnaces were supplied the raw materials.  The track is about 3.5 miles with about 265 monorail cars in motion during working times.


The track

The last station is the Blower Hall.  Huge blowers generated an enormous mass of compressed air for the blast furnaces.  The machines themselves were driven by blast furnace gas, an ingenious cycle of energy.


Inside the blower hall

Below is a view of the plant from "Paradise" an area that has been left to itself for 25 years between the former coking plant and the Saar river.  Plants and animals were able to develop freely, as in paradse.  



Overall it was a pretty neat excursion - aside from the normal castles, ruins, fests, etc. that we usually find ourselves at! 

  

LINK TO THE PICTURES

Betcha feel a whole lot smarter about iron production now don't you?!