TEES Valley Mayor Ben Houchen has kick-started work to knock down Teesworks’ torpedo ladle shed in what is the site’s biggest demolition project to date. Built in the 1920s, the 250,000sq ft shed was used to house specially designed rail ladles, called torpedoes, which were hauled by purpose-built 70-tonne locos over a four-mile rail system to move molten iron from the Redcar Blast Furnace and into the BOS plant for processing. Each torpedo weighed 350 tonnes empty and 700 tonnes when filled with molten iron. The ladle shed has laid unused since 2015 when the blast furnace closed, with the ladles removed during the closure.