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ated belt conveyor capable of carry- ing raw material from the dock to the plant at the rate of 6 tons a minute. A more complete description of the bridge and the conveyor system will be given later in this article. The new harbor has been laid out on a magnificent scale but on a strict- ly business basis. That is, it is so de- signed that the largest freighters on the Great Lakes may deliver and re- ceive cargo here in the most efficient manner possible. These largest size standard lake bulk freighters holding 12,000 tons of limestone can readily be unloaded by the overhead bridge while at the same time self-unloading boats are automatically discharging cargoes also of 12,000 tons each at a speed of approximately a ton per sec- ond, giving a maximum efficiency. Purpsse of Project Cost Reduction B. F. Affleck, president of the Uni- versal Portland Cement Co. in an article.in the May number of Factory said in part: “Investing several million dollars in our plants without increas- ing capacity by a single barrel has so reduced manufacturing expense that the improvements will pay for them- selves in a reasonable time. Included in this program is a $2,000,000 harbor project at our- Chicago plant. Take this harbor and dock devel- opment. We are not build- ing it because we shall get any proprietary satisfaction from seeing impressive boats tie up at our private dock. We are constructing it be- cause it will help reduce costs in two important ways. It will permit us to ship cement economically by boat and it will enable us_ to bring in bulky raw mate- rials and feed them into our plant at a distinct saving over the cost of bringing the same materials by rail. Where we have been ship- ping cement exclusively by rail, we shall be able now to use both rail and _ water. Where we have been get- ting part of our stone by rail we shall now get all of it by boat from the quarry at Calcite, Mich., the largest quarry in the world. The large scale quarrying opera- tions permit getting the stone out at low cost; the water haul results in a con- siderable saving in freight. - The deepest harbor on the Great Lakes, one of the larg- est boats on the lakes, one of the heaviest boat-unloading wy 2000 ij cj i a SOS 4. Sm SES I ne = ry Lake Michigan ye bridges in the Chicago district, a 55- acre harbor basin, a 30-acre storage yard holding a million tons of lime- stone or coal, a belt conveyor nearly a mile long, and a lighthouse with one of the brightest beacons on Lake Mich- igan are things we have had to supply in order to take full advantage of the economies inherent in our waterway program. “Most of the stone will come in self- unloading vessels which are equipped with elevators to bring the material up out of the holds and load it onto belt conveyors to carry it into the new storage-yard. One of these boats alone can carry about 15,000 tons and can unload itself at about the rate of a ton a second. “As some stone will come by stand- ard steamers other than _ self-unload- crs, we have provided a boat-unloading bucket? bridge of unusual size and weight. Being movable to any point on > the dock and having a 10-ton clam- shell bucket, it can pick up its gen- erous bite of stone from any boat at the dock or from any point in the storage yard and deposit it on convey- ors for speedy transportation to the plant.” The company responsible for this port development, the Universal Port- land Cement Co. had its origin in r Breakwate!l __.58 1200 foot ce mae sa iaast 25 "ase <5 SE rate Y BFE "Sere “EET ‘ SS ORR Es: Buffington Harbor Range Light \ bs Dock Office 6 Power Plant So ' ff 4 Buffington Harbor Ind. Ae oo y ft ge Lake Michigan Universal Portland Cement Co. MARINE REVIEwW—August, 1927 \ Buffington a pie House 1896 as the cement department of the Illinois Steel Co., with a 500-barrel per day cement plant at North works on Wabansia avenue, Chicago. In 1900 a plant on the Calimet river at the South works of the Steel company was added and attained an output of 2000 barrels per ‘day. In 1903 construction was begun on the first unit of the plant at what is now Buffington between Indiana Har- bor and Gary on the Lake Michigan shore. This plant was one of the first large industries to locate in the north- west corner of Indiana. At that time the population of Lake county Indiana was 48,092 and construction of the great steel works in Gary had not be- gun. Today the population of this sec- tion is 250,000. Buffington Harbor Is Developed In 1906 the cement department of the Illinois Steel Co. was reorganized as the Universal Portland Cement Co., a separate corporation subsidiary to the United States Steel Corp. A sec- cnd unit at Buffington and also a plant at Pittsburgh were added in 1908. The third unit at Buffington was completed in 1912 and a plant was built at Duluth, Minn. in 1916. The present capacity of the company is about 60,000 barrels of cement per day. About half of this production comes from the three mills at Buffington. As described above, the new harbor at Buffington with ample depth of water, a large basin for ships, a long rock-filled pier, a sub- stantial breakwater, a con- erete dock wall and a dock and storage yard spanned by a traveling bridge carrying a trolley and a 10-ton buck- et, provides the most effi- cient equipment for receiv- ing raw materials and de- livering the finished prod- uct by the cheapest mode of transportation, that is by water. To complete this cheap way of handling ma- terials a conveyor running in a tunnel carries the stone from which the cement is made directly from the storage yard to the cement plant. At the end of the breakwater there is a con- crete lighthouse 50 feet high equipped with a government standard fixed light and fog horn. This lighthouse known as the Buffington lighthouse stands more than one-half mile out in the lake light- ing the entrance to the 29