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UER Forum > Archived US: Northeast > Steel Plant, Watervliet NY (Viewed 543 times)
surrybee 


Location: Cohoes, NY
Gender: Female




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Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
< on 3/19/2010 1:40 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
After I finally treated myself to a DSLR a few weeks ago, a friend of mine who shoots mostly abandoned asylums, hospitals, and schools in Louisiana piqued my interest in Urbex. I'm lucky enough to live just outside Albany NY. I could probably explore within an hour of here for years and never visit all the cool things there are to see.

As is my usual method of doing things, I didn't start small. I explored this steel plant for probably 2 hours before my ADD kicked in.

This steel plant was closed several years ago. It's hard to find a definitive answer, since the last owners I know of went through bankruptcy, and the company who later purchased it is in Spain. I also later learned that it's a Superfund site with PCB, Chromium, Arsenic, and Cadmium contamination.

Some of my information shows that it was closed in 1999 when the company went through bankruptcy. Another place says someone died here in 2002 in a crane accident when still owned by that company. Calendars on the wall had dates of 1997 and 1993, so I really have no idea.

Total of 40-something shots, here's a few...

1.


2.


3. Probably due to a morbid fascination with the fact a guy was killed in a crane accident, I shot every crane I saw. Not all of them made it to flickr.


4.


5.


6.


7. This felt somehow ironic.


8.


The full set is at http://www.flickr....72157623523028905/
[last edit 3/19/2010 1:44 PM by surrybee - edited 1 times]

gr8fzy1 


Location: Waterbury, CT
Gender: Male


Fewer and Fewer...

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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 1 on 3/20/2010 12:21 AM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
These are beautiful! Welcome to the clan!

Softly creeping through
Empty hallways decades old,
glimpsing history.
KevBot 


Location: Central Upper Middle Northern New York
Gender: Male


Up on the roof again

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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 2 on 3/20/2010 2:24 AM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Nice photos!

My buddy went there last year and found a geo chache box with a "bloody" shirt in it.



surrybee 


Location: Cohoes, NY
Gender: Female




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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 3 on 3/20/2010 12:47 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Thanks I didn't explore quite the whole thing, like I said my ADD kicked in and it was getting toward rush hour and I wasn't relishing getting out the way I came in. Thankfully I found a much less conspicuous way out.

I hadn't actually planned on visiting the steel mill that day. My plan was to hit up an old abandoned hospital, but in all my driving around looking for the best access, I started to get some funny looks so I decided to keep that one for another day.

emck00 


Location: 518/315, New York.
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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 4 on 3/20/2010 10:28 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Nice photos, if you're looking to explore, I'm up near Lake George. Im curious as to what hospital you were near..

Radio2600 


Location: On the Road to Wellville


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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 5 on 3/21/2010 6:43 AM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Geez, I was in there in 2008.

I parked plenty far away, walked through the abandoned RR shops and STILL the cops were on us like white on rice.

South of Albany, try to find this one:


174385.jpg (85 kb, 750x600)
click to view




In order to use your head, you have to go out of your mind.
Curious_George 


Location: Cambridge
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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 6 on 3/21/2010 9:18 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Wow, that looks like an old Alco switcher. Amazing find.

Zephyr 


Location: Buffalo
Gender: Male




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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 7 on 3/22/2010 3:46 AM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
That’s a real nice set. I think I can help with some info on this place, but I don’t have exact dates. I thought that plant shut down in 1999 but maybe as you said it stayed open for a few more years. The company actually consisted of 2 plants. Watervliet had an excellent melt shop and also made extruded “shapes” (extruded bars). Most of the steel melted there after being poured into ingots was rolled/cogged into billets - 4 ½” square bars, 10-14' long. The billets were shipped to the other plant in Dunkirk, NY. I was a metallurgist there from 1988-1997. The Dunkirk plant was/is a hot rolling mill and cold-draw wire mill. We would reheat the billets and roll them into bars and rod. One of the mills in Dunkirk, the bar & rod mill, could roll a billet into a .217" round rod over half a mile long, into a coil, in less than 2 minutes. The coils could be drawn into wire as small as .016" in the wire mill. We also had old style “hand mills” for shorter, thicker size bars and shapes. This plant is still running under new ownership.

I don’t want to go into too much more detail but the uses for the steels made there were interesting. As a specialty steel company, we mostly made high grade stainless and tool steels. One of our bigger contracts was with the U.S. Mint to make the tool steel used in their coin stamping dies. We also made nuclear, aircraft, and surgical implant quality stainless grades. One grade was used for air-bag actuators in cars.

Here’s some pics from the Dunkirk plant I managed to take in 1994, in spite of the company’s no-photos policy. I've never posted them anywhere but I guess this thread is a good place. I'll look through my boxes of books/papers from this place but I don't think I have any pics from Watervliet. If I find any I'll post them.

Billets


Billets being loaded into the reheat furnace in the bar & rod mill


Bar and rod mill


A cobble (bar jumped off the mill) in the bar & rod mill. Overhead crane is there to haul it away.


The "coiler" - bar & rod mill


Coil coming out of the annealing furnace


Coil inspection - No, that's not me. They called this guy "the spook"


One of the two hand mills. Two guys are guiding a short billet out of a "roughing" pass that knocks the scale off.


Same hand mill, a minute later


[last edit 3/22/2010 4:03 AM by Zephyr - edited 1 times]

Radio2600 


Location: On the Road to Wellville


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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 8 on 3/22/2010 4:09 AM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Posted by Curious_George
Wow, that looks like an old Alco switcher. Amazing find.


Alco RS3

Same spot has electric locomotives, passenger cars and other diesels.

Just rusting away in the woods.

See the LDB.

In order to use your head, you have to go out of your mind.
mANVIL 


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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 9 on 3/22/2010 8:07 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Posted by Radio2600
Geez, I was in there in 2008.

I parked plenty far away, walked through the abandoned RR shops and STILL the cops were on us like white on rice.


Same here, I went 2 winters ago with 24 inches of snow on the ground and a cop/security flew up on me almost immediately through unplowed roads.

surrybee 


Location: Cohoes, NY
Gender: Female




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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 10 on 3/22/2010 8:17 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
@ Zepher: Thanks for sharing those. That's some pretty cool stuff. The date information I have is completely from Google. My husband, who used to be a truck driver doing local delivery, swears he remembers delivering there within the last 5-8 years, but doesn't remember much more than that. Without knowing what it was he delivered, that's really not much help either. All he does know was he delivered to the building that seems to have its own entrance down on the southern end of the property where the road turns, and where the little Realtek building is.

@emck00: The hospital I was scoping out is a small community hospital on New Turnpike Rd in Troy. I remember it as Leonard Hospital growing up, but if you google Leonard Hospital you'll get a different location. I haven't researched far enough to see if it's the same & just moved, or a different hospital altogether.

@Radio I parked maybe a quarter mile away in a residential area. I didn't see any law enforcement and no one looked at me askance. That train is on my list of places I want to check out. All I know about it is it's off river rd in Glenmont though. I obviously don't have access to the LDB, so if anyone wants to be generous and drop me a line with more info, I'd be appreciative.

macgruder 


Location: Northern NJ
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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 11 on 3/22/2010 9:13 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Surrybee, welcome to the forums and to the obsession of UE. Great stuff, especially for your first set!

Zephyr, those pictures are awesome, i love seeing people at work in these sort of places, especially ones that are abandoned. It gives more satisfaction to the trip.



Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 50mm 1.2, Canon 28mm 1.8, Canon 16-35 f2.8L
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenbley/
zomgw00t 


Location: Richmond, VA
Gender: Male


heh heh heh

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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 12 on 3/22/2010 10:38 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Welcome Surrybee! Nice set of pictures you have there! If you are ever looking for somebody to explore with in the area, send a message my way. I'm right over at RPI!

~Chappie

"By the early 1970s, techniques of tape manipulation were being superseded by synthesizers, especially the Moog synthesizer, which could theoretically produce any type of pitch or timbre, but usually made a sound like a cat chewing a bee." ~ BBC Radiophonic Workshop - The Alchemists of Sound
Zephyr 


Location: Buffalo
Gender: Male




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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 13 on 3/24/2010 12:03 AM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Posted by surrybee
@ Zepher: Thanks for sharing those. That's some pretty cool stuff. The date information I have is completely from Google. My husband, who used to be a truck driver doing local delivery, swears he remembers delivering there within the last 5-8 years, but doesn't remember much more than that. Without knowing what it was he delivered, that's really not much help either. All he does know was he delivered to the building that seems to have its own entrance down on the southern end of the property where the road turns, and where the little Realtek building is.


I wish I could remember the dates a little better but a lot of time has gone by. I should add that in the mid 90's there were 1500 people working for the company, about evenly divided between the 2 plants.

Thanks for the comments on my photos. I was really surprised they came out as well as they did. I'm hoping I might have some company literature with pics from Watervliet, but it will take some searching. If I find any I'll post them.

KevBot 


Location: Central Upper Middle Northern New York
Gender: Male


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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 14 on 3/25/2010 5:06 AM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Posted by mANVIL


Same here, I went 2 winters ago with 24 inches of snow on the ground and a cop/security flew up on me almost immediately through unplowed roads.


I used to drive by there everyday to grab lunch or avoid 787 traffic. Police are always back there. I think it's just because its so close to the arsenal / a good place to take a nap.

There's also another complete locomotive in the area complete with with cars (Adirondack rail). If you see Miley Cyrus photo's in the bathroom... that's the one. It shouldn't be too hard to find on google maps.

zomgw00t 


Location: Richmond, VA
Gender: Male


heh heh heh

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Re: Steel Plant, Watervliet NY
<Reply # 15 on 3/29/2010 6:31 PM >
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
 
Posted by mANVIL


Same here, I went 2 winters ago with 24 inches of snow on the ground and a cop/security flew up on me almost immediately through unplowed roads.


I think 2008 was when Burden Iron Works was burned down, so the cops were probably keeping there eyes for arsonists.

~Chappie

"By the early 1970s, techniques of tape manipulation were being superseded by synthesizers, especially the Moog synthesizer, which could theoretically produce any type of pitch or timbre, but usually made a sound like a cat chewing a bee." ~ BBC Radiophonic Workshop - The Alchemists of Sound
UER Forum > Archived US: Northeast > Steel Plant, Watervliet NY (Viewed 543 times)



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