Received the following via email from a fellow railfan.
This is the former Republic Steel Mill In Warren, OH, where my Grandad used to work. This means the end of the Ashtabula to Warren ore train that comes though town every day. Norfolk Southern recently spent a lot of money fixing the line and raising the track speed to 40 mph. So, this might be the end of making steel in Warren over the last 100 years.
This morning while sitting on the front porch having coffee about 0800 I decided to take a drive to Weirton and Mingo to look around.
Depressing is all I can say.
From Rt 22 looking down on Weirton Jct Yard (Weirton Steel) the yard was well represented with empty NS coil steel cars. No locomotives in sight at all. In downtown Weirton the tracks under the Rt 2 bridge were loaded with inbound loaded coil cars.
Went to Follansbee and Mountain State Carbon is doing well and saw SW1500 #1548 fully lettered Mountain States Carbon. Lots of coke cars in the yard--loaded and empty.
Crossed over to Steubenville and dropped into Mingo. Steubenville mill is boarded up--one car in the parking lot near the guard shanty. At Mingo the locomotive shop was blocked with a train of NS hoppers but no motive power in sight and the "house" doors were closed. It appears that the hopper train was an inbound empty train for Powhatan Six mine.
The icing on the cake today was that RG Steel gave the required 60 days notice to lay off all workers at Warren and close the mill. Cited "doubtful financing arrangements for future operations" as the reason.