World-beating rail: the legacy of rail-making at Workington

The story began at Workington in Cumbria in the mid-nineteenth century, at a time when the first public railways were making a major impact on transport throughout the world.  Workington, with its numerous iron and steel works, was emerging as a strong force in the production of steel rails.

Corus’ Moss Bay plant at Workington traces its roots back to those ground-breaking days, and stayed at the forefront of steel rail production up until the transfer of its facilities to Scunthorpe, introducing alloy steel, austenitic manganese steel and heat-treated rails during its long and proud history. 

Key dates and events in the history of Moss Bay include:

• Erection of the first blast furnace at Moss Bay in 1872, followed a few years later by the erection of a steel rail mill.
• Production of steel rails at Moss Bay commenced in 1877.  The plant was using the Bessemer conversion method to produce high-quality steel, a method developed by Sir Henry Bessemer in 1856 following close working links with a Workington iron company.  The Bessemer Converter revolutionised steel production and resulted in improved steel for rails and other railway products.
• Moss Bay installed three of the revolutionary Bessemer converters in 1877, each with an eight-ton capacity.  By 1912 these were upgraded to 16-ton capacity.  The Moss Bay plant continued to use Bessemer converters until 1974.  Steel production was then transferred from Workington to Scunthorpe where today’s basic oxygen steelmaking methods owe much to the legacy of Bessemer.
• Moss Bay has had many owners over the years but one thing has remained constant: a commitment to the production of high-quality steel rails.  The plant has produced many thousands of miles of rails for almost every rail network in the world and was the first European rail manufacturer to supply rail to China.  More recently, Corus Rail at Workington was chosen to supply 10,000 tonnes of long welded rail for a new phase of the high-speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
• Moss Bay and its sister welding plant at Castleton always had a reputation for innovation, and they both invested in modern processes and advanced quality-control methods throughout their history.  In September 2001 Corus Rail at Workington became one of the first companies in the world to achieve the new ISO 9001:2000 quality standard.  Important innovations in recent decades have included:

• 1970s: installation of a roller straightening machine to meet tighter rail straightness tolerances; installation of a walking beam gas reheating furnace to re-heat steel blooms.
• 1980s: investment in high-speed sawing and drilling machines; modernisation of the rail bank to handle 120 feet rails; installation of rail heat treatment plant to provide improved wear resistance properties; investment in modern welding plant to provide long welded rail in strings.
• 1990s onwards: investment in state-of-the-art process and quality control methods including computer modelling for tight control of rail rolling temperatures and laser wave meter technology for measuring rail straightness (Corus was the first rail company to adopt this technology).  Corus Rail’s patented ‘Perfect Weld’ was also introduced to produce welded rail in lengths up to 220m.

Corus is proud of its rail-making heritage and pays tribute to the people of Workington who have contributed so much to the quality and world-class reputation of Corus rail.  The well-established and proven Corus rail-making processes moved to Scunthorpe in 2005.  Rail-making at Corus has entered a new era, but the legacy of Workington lives on.