219 Comments Posted by bob

This shot gives the impression that the boiler fires were giving you the background light off the pipes, great photo.

Wow!! that there is a pneumatic control station.
Compressed air was used to control the opening and closing of valves.
Electrical signals can be translated to pneumatic and vise-versa.

And I have do agree, you captured that very well, Kudos.

I remember my first, oh yea!! IBM 5650, dual 5 1/4 floppy drive, no HD, 512kb of ram(I actually think it was less)
Then a 286 came into my life which was able to use 1mb ram.
The Mosiac browser anyone???

It hard to make out with any certainty but it looks like a pump motor with the bell housing still attached.

Yea! that's a reciprocating steam engine. The steam header can be seen in the background with a steam supply takeoff going to the unit.

These were used as auxillary power generators in the day.
Just as G. Dammann said, it probably powered the electrical generation unit, amongst other equipment.

It's a water distillation unit.
We used them at our hospital.
Steam from the power house is piped to the SS unit, and the distilled water is stored in the unit on the right for use.

We used it to clean out our chemical treatment test kits vials.

Back in 2001 I worked in a hospital power house. On the mid-night shift i'd walk around the building, mainly just out of sheer bordom.
The 5th floor, which was not occupied anymore, was the old pediatric ward and was said to be haunted.
Well! one night I dis-embark from the elevator, turned the corner and I swear I saw something at the end of a long hallway. This did not happen only once but on several occasions.
The figure appeared to move swiftly out of view as if it knew I was there. At first i thought of the normal stuff, someone doing the same thing as me, just roaming the halls. This wasen't so though, a key was needed to gain access via the elevator and only the charge nurse OD and engineer OD had the key.
So I called the ER to see of the OD nurse was down there and sure enough she was.

Other occasions I'd get a glimpse of a figure moving behind the boilers(they were huge) I'd walk to the area and no-one was there.
Apparently, some yrs prior a boiler tender died of a massive heart-attack and was found back behind the boilers.
I'm still spooked to this day.

So to sum up, do you believe in ghost?

Thanks Lynne.
I guess laundries make me feel a little dirty in a sick sort of way. Man! I'm demented.

Anyway, there is still so much more of this site that I haven't seen yet, off I go->

Rose....ah..umm, I mean Lynne, what did you do with the "Heart of the Ocean"?

The clock, or parts there-of, somehow ended up in a antiques shop in Chicago.
The preservation dude's bought it back and re-installed it during this past summer.

http://central.termina ... 05/Picture_568.jpg

That's OK ~Me, there is nothing wrong with a little nibble every now and then.

We should be thanking you for this site and all you have done to share your passion of day's gone-by.

We all have the same interest here and you allow us to share that with you, for that...Thank You.

A segment of the movie "Best Friends" was shot at the terminal in "82".
The building is in Buffalo.

http://www.opacity.us/image3019_furnaces.htm
Ah!! now it all comes together.

This is a control for a moving grate coal bed.
This feeds coal at a set rate for proper and efficient burning.

http://www.opacity.us/image3019.htm

This looks like the coal hopper for the boiler firebox.
The controls probably control the amount of coal put onto the coalbed to keep it even and level.
The patched over opening above are sight portholes for visually inspecting the coalbed and flame.