June 1994

Cast House Foundation of the Furnace at Johnson City

Here's one of those girders I mentioned in the other photos of the cast house foundation. These girders held up the metal roof on the structure. They look like they were just cut off with a cutting torch when the furnace was dismantled. Looks like the concrete edge was there when the girders were cut off, but I don't know if the concrete was poured when the cast house was built. Obviously the girdgers were already there when the concrete was installed, so they could have been an improvement to the foundation over the 30 years that the furnace was in operation. I'm working under the assumption that the concrete provided an edge for the sand floor used to form the iron pigs. There's alot of good information about this iron furnace, and iron making in general, in past issues of "The Stemwinder", the journal of the ET&WNC RR Historical Society produced from 1988-2007. If you're interested, all 62 issues are available in PDF format on CD here.