I was reading the history of the Taylor-Wharton Iron & Steel Company when I came across an interesting story from the 1890s. The High Bridge, NJ plant manager, Percival Chrystie, was in Scranton, trying to sell manganese steel mine car wheels. Taylor-Wharton was the first American firm to make manganese steel under the Hadfield license. Manganese steel is especially hard and makes an excellent material for components such as railroad frogs and certain rails subject to especially heavy wear. One of Chrystie's jobs was to sell more manganese steel. In Scranton, he met up with an unidentified mine owner and, from atop the top floor of the tallest building in Scranton, given the following challenge: "If your wheel is as strong as you say it is, drop it out of the window and let's find out if it will break," After watching Chrystie "heave the wheel out of the window" and see it survive, the mine owner agreed to buy the mangangese steel wheels. The heavy duty wheels became a staple of anthracite mining through the peak years of the industry. Since the firm was then known as the Taylor Iron & Steel Company, the wheels were sold under the TISCO name.

yea i can agree to their hardness. bella can tell the story as we had our magsteel wheels turned down on a lathe to remove the flat spots...........

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Being a machinist, many grades of steel contain manganese. The content does differ from grade to grade although. Common cold finish like 1018 has .6 - .9 %. Manganese steel, 13xx family has 1.75% min. Never worked with it though.

yeah when i took ugm's mine car wheel to diamond mfg. in wesy wyoming he said they were incredibly hard wheels, each wheel staid on the lathe for over 24 hrs on a computer lather, he said they broke so many bits on each wheel it wasnt even funny, evey time it hit s flat spot the bit just shattered, thank god we got them to donate the time (and material) to do those wheels for us or it would have cost over 2K