[Jeroen]

Mrs D needed a new cupboard for her hobby. One of her hobbies is period dress-making. She makes these dresses herself and has quite the collection. As it is always expanding, she needs more cupboard space.

Ikea cupboards are ideal for this purpose. These days they have a cupboard line Pax, that allows for a lot of customisation. So not only build your own, but design your own. There are some 10-12 Ikea stores in the Netherlands. So we went to the nearest one to us. With the help of an Ikea employee designed the cupboard. However, they did not have the doors in stock my wife wanted. Those doors were going to be discontinued. They had some up in the north in Groningen. Funnily enough, Ikea keeps a strict division between its online stock and store stock. This was Groningen store stock. The only way to get them was to drive all the way up to Groningen.

I decided to check the stores in Antwerp, Belgium and Duisburg, Germany which are in fact closer to us than Groningen. Sure enough, Duisburg had three doors in store. So I ordered them through what Ikea calls click and collect. You order online but collect them yourselves from their shop.

I have driven past Duisburg many times, but have never visited it. Although closer to home than Groningen it is still well over an hour and a half driving. So I wanted to combine the Ikea pick-up with a little exploration of Duisburg. Turns out they have a very nice and interesting inland water museum and something called Landschaftspark.

When you do your "click and collect" order online you also have to choose a date and timeslot to come and collect. I had chosen 11-12 hours. At 2 minutes to eleven, my Jeep and I rocked up to the "click and collect" loading dock at Ikea Duisburg. Popped inside and five minutes later I had my three doors in the Jeep.



From Wikipedia:

Duisburg is a city in Germany's Rhineland, the fifth-largest city (after Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund and Essen) in the nation's most populous federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Its 500,000 inhabitants make it Germany's 15th-largest city. Located at the confluence of the Rhine river and its tributary the Ruhr river, it lies in the west of the Ruhr urban area, Germany's largest, of which it is the third-largest city after Dortmund and Essen. The Ruhr itself lies within the larger Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region, one of Europe's largest conurbations. The city lies on both sides of the Rhine, with the city centre and most boroughs on the river's right bank, and is the only city of the Rhine-Ruhr region lying on both the Rhine and Ruhr rivers. Duisburg is one of the largest cities in the Meuse-Rhenish (closely related to Dutch) dialect area and the largest in the Kleverlandish area (north of the Uerdingen Isogloss).
Duisburg has the world's largest inland port,[4] "Duisburg-Ruhrorter Häfen", in Duisburg-Ruhrort. Germany's third-largest and the Rhine-Ruhr region's main airport, Düsseldorf Airport, lies near the city, in Düsseldorf-Lohausen. With 42,747 students, the University of Duisburg-Essen is Germany's ninth-largest university. It has campuses in Essen and Duisburg, and a university hospital in Essen. Duisburg is a result of numerous incorporations of surrounding towns and smaller cities. The city is renowned for its steel industry. All blast furnaces in the Ruhr are now located in Duisburg. In 2000, 49% of all hot metal and 34.4% of all pig iron in Germany were produced here. It also has a large brewery, König. In the early Middle Ages, it was a royal court of the Franks, first mentioned in writing in 883.

From Ikea I first drover to the inland waterway museum. I also visited the old city centre on the river. I will do a separate thread on that.

Duisburg skyline is full of industrial buildings, chimneys and so on. Everywhere you look there are factories. My wife would have hated it, but I actually enjoy driving through these industrial estates.





I arrived at the Landschaftspark at around 14.30. Parked next to me was this lovely Mercedes W123T.



To be honest I had no idea what to expect. This is what their website says:

The Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord is the outstanding example of a new type of park shaped by industry. At the centre of an area of about 180 hectares, stands the decommissioned Thyssen ironworks in Duisburg-Meiderich. From 1901 to 1985 the works produced pig iron - as a rule as a primary product for further processing in Thyssen's steel works.

Today, visitors can explore the old ironworks as a “living” industrial monument. With its three blast furnaces standing in a row, bunkers, inclined lifts and casthouses, Meiderich ironworks conveys the traditional image of a turn-of-the-century blast furnace plant.

Visitors have the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the production process, from delivery of the raw materials to removal of the pig iron. Blast Furnace 5 in particular is the perfect place to gain a very realistic picture of the impressive production chain of the former ironworks.

Such a comprehensive building stock is unique in the Ruhr District, and also exceptional throughout Germany. What gets architects so excited is that only in Meiderich have the original buildings been so sensibly supplemented with the plants of the post-war period. This is why the whole blast furnace complex has been a listed building since 2000.

The parking place is very German. Massive (2000 places), extremely well kept and also free of charge!

As I walked towards the entrance I noticed this gigantic poster which gives an overview of the site:



Here is the interesting thing, this is a now an official monument, entrance is free. You are allowed to roam across all buildings and climb all the various structures too. There are no guards. Just simple signs where you can and can not go! That is all.

I was quite hungry so I decided to grab a bite to eat. The official restaurant was closed (too early in the season I guess). Luckily there was little market stall selling typical German food. So I choose a curry bratwurst and a cappacino.



I ate whilst sitting outside at a wooden picknick table, taking in this massive old factory complex. The weather started improving by the minute and there were hardly any people about. A couple of bicycle routes pass right through the park as well.


So lets have a look at this facility:

This used to be a steel plant, in particular producing so called pig iron. Apart from the actual blast furnaces where the pig iron was produced they had all the facilities on site to run the complete operation.

The old gas storage tank.



An old railroad carriage designed to carry molted iron to the foundries.



I find these old plants fascinating and they make for some interesting images too!

[Jeroen]

Ok, so here we go. After my lunch, I just started wandering around the plant. Initially, I just walked across several different areas.





It's just about deserted. It looks a bit spooky even. All these massive, partly rusted, machines and constructions







Next, I climbed one of the furnaces. There are endless stairs with many platforms with different functions. This was early on during my ascend to the very top. This is the level where these huge burners pumped in massive flames to melt the coke/iron mix.



Every platform had a sign stating the altitude. This is about 3/4 up.



Behind the furnaces, you have a good overview of the coal bunkers.



The other furnace. Currently, only one furnace is open, but this one is being worked on. I assume it will also be opened up to the public in due course.



A panorama image gives a good impression of the sheer size of this factory



Also in the distance, only about 4-5 kilometres away, the Ikea I had visited that morning.

[Jeroen]

Across the various structures, you will find large posters explaining how this plant was operated. German and English!




Here you see one of the many, many stairs I climbed. They might be the original stairs, but they have been made more safe, by adding these perforated plates.

As I mentioned before, access is free, with no guards, just a few signs where you can and can't. Obviously, in Germany that is all that is needed and I must admit I like it a lot.



Here is another poster explaining how the furnace worked.



Here you see, that rusty old thing, one of the ore-trollies as you can see on the poster as well. It would be positioned at the bottom of the coal/ore bunker and be filled.



Next, it would be hauled up to the top of the furnace and be tipped into it.



It all feels very quiet and serene these days. But I can tell you , when these plants were in full operation it was like a scene from hell. Very noisy, very hot, lots of fumes, smoke and so on. Steel mills were dangerous places to work. Lots of extremely large and heavy machinery, dangerous environment.

In the late 80s, I worked with an American firm doing industrial automation and environmental control and measuring equipment. So I visited the "Hoogovens" (steel mills) in IJmuiden, the Netherlands often as they were an important customer of ours. So I have been on these plants, albeit quite a bit more modern than these. It is quite the experience. If you ever get a chance to visit a steel plant, make sure you do. Even if you don't understand anything about what is going on, it is a truly unique experience. Few industries come with equipment this size!

This image is taken below the ore/coal bunker. This is where that little rusty bucket I showed in an earlier image gets filled.





As I mentioned, several cycle routes pass through this industrial monument. This being German Cyclist, they are kitted out to the nines! No German would jump on a bicycle in their regular day clothes of course. The image also gives a bit of a sense of scale.



Steel plants are a bit like little towns. They have roads with names too. What else would you call this main street? Hochoven means blast furnace. It is very similar to the Dutch term Hoogoven.



There were a couple of buildings I tried to visit. They used to have their own electricity plant with a whole row of magnificent steam engines driving generators. The building is still there, but all the technical equipment has been removed. One massive open space. Apparently, they use it as an event/concert hall.

There was also the pump/compressor building. Still had some equipment inside, but it was locked. But they had some equipment outside.

Such as this diesel-driven compressor. Made in 1967 it produced 57500 m3/h of air, running at 2700 RPM. That is a lot of air, but it came at quite low air pressure. (1500 mmWS as per the specification plate on it, that is 1500 mm of water column).



Also found this turbine, or rather a turbine compressor section I think.



These are water-cooling towers. The working principle is very simple and you will still find water cooling towers in operation like these today. The water is dispersed across wide-open surfaces. The idea is to create as much water surface, by spreading it out and letting it drip down, so it is cooled by air. These days when you see for instance a power plant with a lot of white smoke, more often than not, it is just water vapour from the cooling towers.



I found this place absolutely fascinating. I spent some three hours wandering around before it was time to head home and start putting together Mrs. D new Ikea wardrobe.

If would like to see some more, and much better images than mine, do click on the link below for a fascinating 360o journey across this steel plant.

https://www.360landschaftspark.de/tour.html

I find, by and large, the Germans are very good at preserving their heritage. They will also find new uses of some of these sorts of sites. Other factory sites have been turned into climbing towers for instance.

So if you ever find yourself in the Duisberg area, something you should consider visiting!

Of course, when I got home, with my three Ikea doors, I finished Mrs. D new wardrobe.



Jeroen

[Aditya]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

[JayKavadi]

Thanks for sharing Jeroen. This is fascinating indeed. Over the last decade, I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited the steel plants in Vijaynagar (JSW), Hazira (Essar) and a few smaller ones as part of my project financing role. Its amazing to see how far these plants have come in terms of layouts and technologies over the past 4 decades (which is when the above plant was abandoned). What’s even better is the decision to turn the site into a public park which allows a peek into the rich industrial past of Germans !

[sandeepmohan]

Truly amazing. Thanks for sharing.

Most would look at this and call it an eye sore.

What I appreciate is that they did not smash down the place, dismantle the equipment. Most of it appears as it was. The workers left the place, moved on. Nothing else did.

I have not been to a steel producing plant. However, I did get a chance to visit the Rail Wheel Factory in Yelahanka, Bangalore, India. From start to finish, I saw how they went about building a railway wheel or bogie. As you said, I did not understand most of what was going on. It was the sight of all the activity and the chaos of a factory environment that got my interest.

Where have they moved the processing of pig Iron, general steel production?

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

.

Where have they moved the processing of pig Iron, general steel production?

Thyssen Krup still operates several steel works in Duisburg.

https://www.gem.wiki/ThyssenKrupp_St...rg_steel_plant

More steel is produced in Duisburg than in any other European city!

Jeroen