Rows of stakes rising from several parallel beams in a soaking pit form a multiplicity of compartments each designed to receive one or more slabs coming to rest on a pair of such beams. The slabs are carried hot to the pit and cold from the pit by a railborne transporter including a traverse provided with two sets of fixed vertical guide bars hanging down between the rows of stakes, these sets being separated in the direction of travel by twice the stake spacing and flanking an array of vertically reciprocable gripper arms lowerable to the level of the beams between the rows of stakes. The gripper arms, mounted on carriages guided by the bars, define with them two carrying cages, alignable with a pair of adjacent pit compartments, and are provided with retractable feet that can be alternately extended across the bottom of one or the other cage for supporting a hot slab to be deposited in one compartment and then extracting a cooled slab from the adjoining compartment.
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