YOUNGSTOWN — A rare Pollock slag car has been moved to the Mahoning Valley Railroad Heritage Association’s (MVRHA) Jim Marter Yard. The rare rail car will be restored as part of the MVRHA’s museum collection.

The MVRHA owns a yard on Poland Avenue in Youngstown, where it houses a vast collection of historic rail cars and engines. Some have been fully restored while others are under restoration or waiting for the work to begin.

According to MVRHA President Carl Jacobson, there were a handful of companies in the Mahoning Valley with blast furnaces. Each of those companies like Youngstown Sheet and Tube, the Campbell Works, Ohio Works, Brier Hill, and Warren steel plants had a large fleet of slag cars. The cars were placed on a siding in the mill where it caught the top layer of molten steel, or the slag. It was siphoned off through troughs and into the slag cars. Those cars were then taken to a place to dump the molten slag onto a pile where it could be used for aggregate in concrete, for road materials and ballast, and as a source of phosphate fertilizer.

“Considering the hundreds of slag cars there were in the Mahoning Valley back in the day, this slag car is the only one left,” Jacobson said.

MVRHA member Mike McCleery added: “This (slag car) is Youngstown Sheet and Tube number 17. We don’t know what year it was built, but believe it was around 1930s.”

The slag car was made by the William B. Pollock Company of Youngstown, according to Jacobson. Pollock manufactured blast furnaces and the rail cars needed to move molten steel, such as hot metal cars, slag cars and bottle cars.

At the museum yard, the association also has the short, flat rail cars that moved the hot ingots that would soon become steel products.

The William B. Pollock Company in Youngstown had a good 120-year run, starting in 1863 and ending in 1983. The slag car that MVRHA owns was from YS&T and was last used in 1979, the year its blast furnace was shut down for good.

The slag car could dump a load of molten slag through the use of the locomotives air lines. The air would allow the car to be tilted and the slag poured out. When that happened at night, it would cause the sky to light up and glow a yellowish-orange hue.

Jacobson said it was the late Jim Marter who saw the need to preserve history and was able to get the slag car in 1985. It was moved to a siding in Struthers, just four miles from the museum yard.

To move a rail car over two railroads from the siding to the museum would normally cost around $700. The first would be $400 to move it over the CSX line to the Youngstown and Southern line. An additional $300 would be needed to move it from the Y&S line into the Jim Marter Yard.

“The problem with the slag car is in the bearings,” Jacobson said. “No car with brass bearings can be moved over CSX tracks. This slag car has brass bearings.”

That left only one choice to move the car the four miles to the museum’s yard. The slag car had to be broken down with a crane. Moved on truck trailers, then reassembled at the MVRHA yard.

“We were able to get a grant from the Pollock Foundation in Chicago, and another grant from the Roberta Hannay Foundation,” Jacobson said.

He said Roberta Hannay was a relative of William B. Pollock.

He said the grants helped cover the $13,600 cost for the four-mile trip and the crane. The move was completed last month and the Pollock slag car took the short trip to its new home.

The slag car joins another Pollock car as well as other rare rail cars at the yard. Fully restored at the main entrance is a Pollock hot metal car, used to haul large ladles of hot steel with the ability to pour that steel into molds.

The museum also has a mold car that was used to transport the glowing hot ingots inside the mill.

Jacobson said the MVRHA does own a couple of bottle cars (rail cars shaped like a football) that used to transport molten steel. Those cars are being stored in a yard and will someday make the trip via rail since the cars don’t have the old brass bearings.

Among some of the engines that the Jim Marter Yard contains is a fireless mill engine that only contains a steam tank, no fire box. Because it operated inside an old mill building with wooden rafters, having no fire box meant no sparks to ignite the wood.

Other rare rail equipment is housed at the yard such as a switch engine built for the Army Corp of Engineers, and a ballast car that could dump gravel from either side.

Valley families can enjoy the historic rail equipment 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. The MVRHA yard is located at 1340 Poland Ave. in Youngstown, and more can be learned from the association’s web page at mvrha.org.

“We ask for a $2 donation and children under 5 are free,” McCleery said. “It helps us offset the cost of maintaining the yard.”