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Located in Steelton, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg, PST uses electric furnace steelmaking and a continuous caster in the production of rails for the rail transportation industry, specialty blooms for the forging and re-rolling industries, and flat bars for cold-drawing and other industrial applications. It is one of only two rail producers in the United States. PST also produces forging quality ingots.

Facilities

Pennsylvania Steel Technologies completed a modernization program in late 1994, designed to establish itself as the premier North American producer of high quality rails, flat bars and specialty blooms. The program included a state-of -the-art DC electric furnace, a ladle furnace, a vacuum degassing unit, and in-line rail head-hardening equipment.

Principal facilities include two electric arc furnaces with an annual raw steel production capability of about 1.1 million tons, a continuous bloom caster, a 44-inch blooming mill, a 20-inch bar mill, a 35-28-inch rail mill, and finishing and shipping facilities for long-length (80 foot) rails.

Rail Manufacturing Process

	1. DC Electric Arc Furnace Direct current technology provides PST with the best available means of making steel. Advantages include large heats, more heats per day, greater consistency and greater reliability. This results in significantly better steel quality. Also, the eccentric bottom tapping promotes more efficient tapping and cleaner steel.
	2. Ladle Arc Reheating Furnace This furnace performs additional steel refining by providing excellent temperature control and precise chemical adjustment capabilities. It provides steel to the Jumbo Bloom Caster at the correct temperature, chemistry and time. Argon stirring, through a porous plug in the bottom of the ladle, promotes the homogeneous mixing of additives to the ladle, assists in temperature control and promotes the flotation of non-metallic inclusions.
	3. Tank Vacuum Degasser Most importantly, vacuum degassing lowers the hydrogen content of the liquid steel. Argon stirring during degassing also assists the removal of hydrogen and further improves steel cleanliness. Clean steelmaking practices, combined with the benefits of the Ladle Furnace and Vacuum Degasser, means that the Jumbo Bloom Caster receives steel with significantly improved internal cleanliness levels, correct chemistry and correct temperature at the correct time. This results in improved rail fatigue life.
	4. Continuous Jumbo Bloom Caster The Jumbo Bloom Caster produces the cleanest rail steel possible, because it eliminates reoxidation by completely shrouding the molten steel from the atmosphere, which prevents the formation of harmful non-metallic inclusions.  Rapid solidification affects the inclusion distribution. Those that remain tend to be small, globular and more finely dispersed. Also, surface quality is dramatically improved. The resultant blooms are world-class quality, with a sound interior and excellent surface � the ideal starting material for rolling mills. Special casting practices and processes, developed by a dedicated team of researchers and caster specialists, have further improved the internal cleanliness of the blooms by floating out additional remaining impurities.
	5. Soaking Pits Our soaking pits enable the hot connection of the continuous cast bloom to the rolling mills. Hot connection eliminates the potential thermal cracking problems associated with cooling blooms to ambient temperature and reheating. Also, the Soaking Pit Control System has been updated completely with the latest computer control technology.
	6. 44" Blooming Mill, 35" Rougher, 28" Rail Mill Three separate mills are used to roll the continuous cast blooms into finished rail. Due to its jumbo size, each bloom requires many passes to reduce it to the final rail section. The resulting 25-to-1 reduction ratio is much greater than any other producer of rails from continuous cast steel.

	7. In-Line Head Hardening This unit, a 101-meter in-line process at the exit end of the 28" Rail Mill, uses the latent heat from the rolling process. The system is fully computerized and uses water sprays to slack-quench the rail. The resultant product is composed of pearlite with fine inter-lamellar spacing, which provides rails with excellent hardness and improved wear resistance. Residual stresses are low, and straightness is excellent. The technology for this system comes from CRM (Centre de Recherches Metallurgiques, Leige, Belgium) and MMRA (Metallurgique et Miniere de Rodange-Athus, Luxembourg). Produced by this technology, rails used in heavy-haul service in the U.S. are performing to world-class standards.
	8. Controlled Cooling Rails are cooled in long-length, insulated boxes to ensure the removal of any remaining hydrogen gas.  While the reduction of hydrogen levels through vacuum degassing reduces the need for control cooling, we continue to use control cooling of the rails to further reduce the risk of hydrogen damage.
	9. Roller Straightener Rails are put through a two-plane roller straightening operation. Load levels are continuously monitored to ensure the production of straight rails without mechanical damage.
	10. In-Line Rail Inspection Includes utilization of the following procedures and instruments: � Visual Inspection Station � Ultrasonic Twist Gauge measures elapsed time between two sound beams directed on the base of the rail. � DAPCO 300 Ultrasonic Unit is state-of-the-art, fully computerized with an automatic paint spraying system, and utilizes an array of transducers mounted in neoprene wheels, strategically placed around the rail to monitor internal quality. � Laser Straightness Gauge performs a three-point measurement of deviations throughout the rail body. Laser beams are directed at the head of the rail and data is monitored continuously by a computer. � Optical Section Measurement Unit automatically measures key dimensions of the finished rail. Data is continuously collected and analyzed by a computer to aid section control and allow further reduction of section variability.
	11. In-Line Bar Coding Application System This system   provides effective identification, inventory control and shipping control for all rails shipped to customers. Bar code tags can be used subsequently by customers in their rail inventory, rail welding and field inspection operations.
	12. Shipping Rails are shipped in our own fleet of long-length MTTX cars, specifically designed for shipping 80' rails without banding. This reduces customer unloading time. We can also ship rails in customer-owned cars.