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Interior view showing the melting shop, c.1896. Nos. 1 to 3 (of six) open hearth furnaces seen from casting pit, and viewed from the north east. On the left stand a pair of rail-mounted ladles into which the steel from the furnaces was tapped. These were drawn along the rails by the steam crane on the right whilst the liquid steel they contained flowed into ingot moulds set in the pit between the rails. Beneath the covers in the left foreground are heated ‘soaking pits’ in which the solidified ingots were reheated after removal from the moulds.