Tonawanda Foundry

[bergy]

Several members of this site have asked me over the years to explain the automotive casting process. Since most of my GM experience was at Tonawanda - I thought that I'd start with the overall plant layout - then drill down into how the processes worked in each department. I was blessed to have been superintendent of production in each of the production departments at Tonawanda. The foundry was shuttered in about 1983 and torn down in the 1986 through 1998 period. I couldn't find any composite plant layouts in my files, so over the weekend I placed the foundry outline as accurately as I could on a later drawing of the Tonawanda complex. The combined length of the motor plant and attached foundry was more than 2,000ft! Is this kind of stuff of interest to any of you?