About the Book
Steel, Rails & the World That Was
Steel City Rails is a landmark photography book documenting the steel industry, railroads, and working life of the Pittsburgh and Mon Valley region — a world that defined a city, shaped a nation, and quietly disappeared within a generation.
Keith Clouse was there. From the early 1970s through the slow collapse of the 1980s, he pressed the shutter when others would have put the camera away — in bad weather, on unglamorous branch lines, inside mills, at rusting furnaces. The result is an intimate, unsentimental record of a place and a people in the last years of an industrial era.
The book features over 90 photographs across seven chapters, paired with original essays by Keith Clouse. With forewords by Kevin Scanlon and Ronald A. Baraff (VP of Historic Resources, Rivers of Steel), Steel City Rails is a 196 page hardcover produced to the highest standards of fine press bookmaking.
| ISBN | 978-1-886070-45-5 |
| Expected Availability | November 15, 2026 |
About the Photographer
Keith Clouse
Keith Clouse has been photographing the industrial and railroad landscape of Western Pennsylvania for more than five decades. A lifelong Pittsburgher, he came of age in the shadow of the furnaces and spent years documenting what others overlooked — the dirty fingernail views, the unglamorous trackage, the workers and the machinery of daily industrial life.
His photographs are a record not of spectacle, but of presence: what it looked like, what it felt like, to live and work inside the Pittsburgh that was.
From the Book
A Spread from Chapter Two
Each chapter pairs Keith Clouse’s photographs with his own account of what he saw. Below is a spread from The Furnace & the Ladle — Weirton Steel, November 1986.
Pre-Order
Reserve Your Copy
Steel City Rails is a limited edition hardcover, Smyth-sewn and case-bound, printed to fine press standards. Pre-order now at 20% below the retail price — $48.00 versus the $60.00 retail price. Your card will not be charged until shortly before shipment on or about November 15, 2026.
Contact
Get in Touch
For inquiries about the book, institutional or bulk orders, press copies, or general information:
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