We built a furnace on our grounds at the upper mill and treated several hundred tons of rails for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and with remarkably good results as compared with iron rails.

These were the first hard-headed rails used in America.

We placed them on some of the sharpest curves and their superior service far more than compensated for the advance made by Mr.Thomson.Had the Bessemer process not been successfully developed, I verily believe that we should ultimately have been able to improve the Dodds process sufficiently to make its adoption general.

But there was nothing to be compared with the solid steel article which the Bessemer process produced.
Our friends of the Cambria Iron Company at Johnstown, near Pittsburgh--the principal manufacturers of rails in America--decided to erect a Bessemer plant.

In England I had seen it demonstrated, at least to my satisfaction, that the process could be made a grand success without undue expenditure of capital or great risk.