Acme Steel Co.

Several members of my family were employed by Acme (Interlake) Steel in Riverdale, Il. My dad retired from Acme as a machinist; my uncle retired there as an engineer on the mill railroad; one brother was a crane operator; and another brother retired as an electrician. I have always found heavy industry facinating, and I have vivid memories as a child seeing the hot metal cars coming and going from the mill glowing red into the night as we picked my dad up after 2nd shift. When Walthers came out with the Steel Mill kit in the mid '90's, I made up my mind that I was going to model steel operations, never mind that the IC never served any mills in Chicago.

The IC mainline does run right by the BOF and Rolling Mill in Riverdale, so I justify having it on my layout by proximity and my freelanced Calumet Railroad. I intend on modeling the Riverdale site, as well as a condensed version of the Chicago coke ovens and blast furnace.

Here is the entry for Acme steel from the Encyclopedia of Chicago:

The Acme Flexible Clasp Co. was founded in Chicago in 1884. In 1899, the company merged with the Quincy Hardware Manufacturing Co. of Quincy, Illinois, a manufacturer of barbed steel staples led by James E. MacMurray. The new company, based in Chicago, changed its name to the Acme Steel Goods Co. in 1907; in 1925, it became Acme Steel Co. By the mid-1930s (during the Great Depression), Acme employed about 1,400 Chicago-area residents. A new plant opened in Riverdale, Illinois, in 1918; by the end of the 1950s, when annual sales of well over $100 million placed Acme among the top 300 industrial corporations in the United States, the move from Chicago to Riverdale was complete. In 1964, Acme merged with the Interlake Iron Corp., a Cleveland-based company that owned plants in Chicago, to form the Interlake Steel Corp. In the mid-1970s, as its annual sales approached $700 million, Interlake had 3,500 workers in the Chicago area. A new Acme spun off from Interlake in 1986. The company had trouble staying afloat and employed only about 1,200 local residents by the end of the 1990s, a number that fell as a phased shutdown was begun in 2001. In 2002, the International Steel Group, organized by WL Ross & Co. LLC, bought the shuttered and bankrupt Acme Steel and re-opened it as ISG Riverdale Inc., a sheet minimill employing about 200 workers.

Most, if not all, of the following pictures are taken from the Industrial Heritage Archives of Chicago's Calumet Region website.

View of the blast furnaces on the East side of the Chicago River. Ore and limestone were brought in by barge. Coke was delivered by the huge conveyor belt over the river from the coke ovens on the other side of the river.

View of the coke plant. This plant did have rail service, but most coal would come in via barge or truck.

View of the Riverdale plant. On the left is the IC mainline- 2 freight tracks, 2 passenger, and 2 commuter. There is also an interchange track leading to the IHB here. This plant was served by Pennsy, then Penn Central, and Conrail.