Still orange-hot, the blooms find their way to the rolling mill, where
they go dashing back and forth upon rollers and between rollers--the
latter working in pairs like the rollers of large wringers, squeezing
the blooms, in their successive passages, to greater length and greater
thinness, until at last they take the form of long, red, glowing rails;
after which they are sawed off, to the accompaniment of a spray of white
sparks, into rail lengths, and run outside to cool. And I may add that,
while there is more brilliant heat to be seen in many other departments
of the plant, there is no department in which the color is more
beautiful than in the piles of rails on the cooling beds--some of them
still red as they come from the rollers, others shading off to rose and
pink, and finally to their normal cold steel-gray.
Presently along comes a great electromagnet; from somewhere in the sky
it drops down and touches the rails; when it rises bunches of them rise
with it, and, after sailing through the air, are gently deposited upon
flat cars. Here, even after the current is shut off, some of them may
try to stick to the magnet, as though fearing to go forth into the
world. If so, it gives them a little shake, whereupon they let go, and
it travels back to get more rails and load them on the cars.
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