I was able to attend the Society for Industrial Archeology’s 2007 Fall Tour to Ely, NV. Part of this tour was exploring the Nevada Northern Railway, which was being restored for a tourist destination.
I have posted several times about the Nevada Northern Railway. This time I will post a few photos from inside the blacksmith shop.
No blacksmith shop would be complete without an anvil. Who knew anvils were used for more than dropping on the foes of Bugs Bunny?

There was a fume hood to keep the smoke and fumes away from the blacksmiths. By burning coal, this room would quickly fill up with black, sooty smoke without it!

There were several furnaces. Furnaces would be used for heating parts so that they could be shaped, and also for heat treating finished parts.

Finally, the highlight of the tour was the steam powered forge. Steam would increase the pressure until a mechanical hammer was propelled outwards to contact the material to be forged. Likely, this material was hot-worked (meaning the metal was above its recrystallization temperature), which explains its location in the blacksmith shop instead of the locomotive shop.

I hope you enjoyed this post!!