Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company last month used a novel approach in promoting an ..open house" at its new fiber glass plant at Shelby. N. C it hired a Southern Railway train to transport guests. The result, in the words of a PPG official . . . A fantastic success."
The largest attendance at an "open house" in the 76-year history of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company.
Traveling over the same tracks our railway normally uses in providing freight service to Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company's new Fiber Glass Division at Shelby, N. C., a Southern Railway "special" carried visitors to and from an "open house" celebration at the plant last month. Morning runs in the day - long shuttle service were reserved for children |
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That was the record set on October 21, despite a rainy afternoon, by PPG's vast new Fiber Glass Division at Shelby, N. C., as it was "introduced" to 21,452 visitors from the surrounding area.
As an added attraction, and to help ease parking problems, the company chartered a Southern Railway train to carry visitors from Shelby to the fiber glass plant which is about seven miles from the town. Dubbed the "Fiber Glass Flyer," the train made eight round trips during the day - the first three for school - children only.
Though the train was credited with an "assist" in the success of the open house, carrying about 5,000 adults and children throughout the day, the main attraction was a tour of the eight acre plant where the visitors saw the fascinating process of turning molten glass into yarn.
Fiber Glass Division of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company at Shelby, completed earlier this year, produces glass fiber textile yarns for household curtain and draperies fabrics, and other yams used as reinforcement for plastic products. |
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Glass fiber textile yarns produced here are shipped to other firms where they are woven into fabrics used principally for household draperies and curtains. The plant also turns out short lengths of yarn used as reinforcement for plastics products such as boats, fishing rods, furniture and automobile bodies.
This new Southem-served industry on our Charleston division described itself as "the world's largest producer of fiber glass yam employing the direct melt system exclusively." In this system fiber glass yarn is drawn directly through very small openings from the melting furnaces. A cubic inch of glass yields a fiber 1/300th the diameter of a human hair and 380 miles long.
One of the melting furnaces at the fiber glass plant where raw materials are reduced to molten glass at a temperature of 2800 deg. Fahrenheit. |
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The Pittsburgh Plate Glass Carolina Plant began operation in April. Originally, the company had planned to have 16 furaces producing at a rated annual capacity of 25 million pounds of fiber glass textile yan. A few weeks ago, Pittsburgh Plate Glass announced that it will expand the plant to 24 furnaces, boosting capacity to 40 million pounds a year. Eventual total employment at the plant is estimated at 1,200 persons.
Many of the visitors at the open house had a personal reason for the trip. They went to see where sons and daughters, friends and neighbors work. And they saw a representative sample of the new South, an industrial South that continues to attract more and more industries of every kind.
Whatever their reasons for going, they turned out in record numbers.