Tapping the language of steel life (From The Northern Echo)

Tapping the language of steel life

11:20am Saturday 20th February 2010 in

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THE mothballing of Corus is more than the closure of a factory. It is the death of a local culture that has evolved over 150 years. Ian Reeve, the BBC’s North-East Business Editor, wrapped his tongue around an evocative piece of that culture. The “tapping of the salamander” – the last rites of the furnace – would soon begin, he said.

A salamander is a dazzling, lizard-like creature with peculiar habits. When chased, it drops off its own tail which wriggles about, attracting the predator’s attention while it escapes to grow a new appendage.

It hibernates unseen in logpiles. In olden days, armfuls of logs would be thrown onto a fire. The warmth would awaken the sleeping salamander (Greek for “fire lizard”) and it would crawl from the flames. It was hailed a survivor of the fire. To some, it was even born in the fire and so its mythology grew.

Now to a blast furnace. Burning fuel and iron ore go in the top, a blast of scalding air shoots up from below. The inferno reaches 2,200C. Everything melts and drips down towards the drains. The slag is tapped off by the higher drain; the molten iron is tapped off by the lower drain.

Some substances survive the fire. They settle into the hearth of the furnace below the drains, their minerals sparkling like the skin of an exotic lizard: the salamander.

When the heat is turned off, the salamander will solidfy into an immoveable 750-tonne lump that prevents the furnace from ever being heated again. Therefore, before it sets, it has to be drilled into so it can drain out: the tapping of the salamander.

“Over the generations, steelmakers have developed our own language – deadman, the front-side foreman – which to the outsider seems very bizarre,” said Dave Cocks, Corus technology manager.

Let’s hope the culture, and the Redcar furnace, can survive the fire like a salamander and rise from the ashes like a...

I STEPPED into a surreal moment at Darlington railway station at 10.25am on Thursday. People were agog as they reckoned the Prime Minister had just swept through. “And there’s Harriet,” stage-whispered a Cabinet-spotter as Labour’s deputy leader passed along the platform.

Lord Mandelson glided effortlessly into an enormous people carrier with blacked out windows, while a group of notables, including the leader of Durham County Council and the chief executive of Darlington Borough Council, coalesced around Transport Secretary Lord Adonis on Platform Four.

And then the Royal train drew into Platform One, dignified crests on its doors and discrete curtains over its windows. Iron gates that had been shut for decades swung open, and Prince Charles stepped through.

“I always knew Darlington was the centre of the universe,” said Greg Clark, Tory Shadow Minister for Teesside, also just passing.

‘IJUST couldn’t resist it,” said a workingclass representative at the Cabinet premeeting in Durham Johnston School in a lovely, cheeky regional accent. “I arrived at Durham station, looked for a taxi and saw all this line of posh cars. A driver came up and said: ‘Excuse me sir, are you a minister?’”

He paused to show how he wrestled with the temptation.

“And then I said ‘yes’, and he drove me right here, straight through security with a badge on the window saying ‘HM Government’ and dropped me in front of the door.

“I know I shouldn’t have said yes, but I just couldn’t resist it.”