Comments

looks like someone had fun with those windows

yay for heights

looks like a face on the obelisk

The dial case has Phillips head screws which were invented in the 30s but came into common use after WWII.

The rest of the device has slotted-head screws. It's possible that the screws for the dial case were replaced.

Hard to tell just how old this thing is. I know it's old and there are people who would love to have this. The corrosion around the screws suggests that the dial has been removed and replaced several times. this creates wear of the protective paint around the screws, exposes the bare metal to the elements -- thus the rust around the screws. This, in my opinion, adds to the personality of the piece.

The voltage is DC and the voltmeter reads up to 300. I have no idea what this was for.

The safe looks as if it has wheels (right rear), if so, it may have transported any sort of valuables or accountable mail. I have seen railway safes for this very purpose in the past.

@Chief Johannes:
No, not common rail at all. Common rail is where all injectors are piezoelectric or high speed solenoid high pressure units mounted along a single rail carrying generally over 1000 bar (+14000 psi) pressure. The advantages are that the faster acting piezo injector can use a technique called pilot injection to begin combustion with a limited portion of the fuel before adding the balance of the amount for the cycle. The result is a smoother combustion with some reduction in noise. One simple effect of that is the clatter sound of a common rail engine being a lot less pronounced than a conventional diesel with poppet or unit injectors. A more important effect is that because of the smoother and more controllable combustion characteristics of common rail engines, percussive stress on the bottom end of the engine is drastically reduced. This reduction in stress allows more fuel to be burned (and more power to be produced) with a given size and weight of piston, wrist pin, connecting rod, and crankshaft.
The other advantage of the common rail technology is that the piezo injector valve can switch at a higher fuel pressure, delivering the fuel through a tighter nozzle which atomizes it better, leading to more complete fuel combustion and thus more power out of a given amount of fuel (efficiency!)

This engine does seem to have a single rail fuel distribution manifold which appears to feed individual accumulators for each injector, which would then be driven off of a cam shaft in the engine. This technology is called Unit Injection. This is a reference to how each injector works as an independent unit, developing its own pressure. Distribution rail pressure would be only an amount sufficient to ensure that the unit injectors are not starved of fuel, and would be provided by a gear driven (or possibly electric, though rare) fuel pump.

The principal difference would be that the pressure of the rail is different by at least a factor of 1000, and the injectors on the common rail are electrically fired, not mechanical and cam driven.

Common Rail has just recently found its way into marine applications, including some pretty big stuff, like the Wartsila-Sulzer RTFlex96C, which is the successor to the unit injected RTA96C. The 12RTFlex96C (12 inline) works at around 100 RPM and if I remember correctly has displacement of 1.8 million cubic centimeters per cylinder and power of around 90000 HP. Its family was, as of when I read about if a few years ago, the most efficient internal combustion engine in the world, exceeding 40%. It's also approximately as big as a house. Now find me one of those engines and photograph that!

Thank you for the beautiful photos. I agree with ferdy. It feels like I've been on a trip not only through the building, but through time as well.

It says a lot about the attention to detail that went into this building. All the masses of people that passed through, but how few of them would ever get to see this. Thank you for the look/see.

Can you imagine what it must have been like to work here? Who was the last one in this room? Did he stop and look back once more before closing the door behind himself for the last time? I can almost hear the footsteps fading away.

I'm thinking of how it must have been to be one of the workers who built it. Each of them had a story, too. And each brick/tile had to be placed just right to make the pattern come out right. How long did it take, how did they do it; and where did they go when they were done?

It kind of reminds me of a church...

The pipes on the right hang so low that a drop ceiling would be just inches above the doorways. That would look funny.

Ferdy is right. After that much time one would not have to worry about TB or any infectious remnants from former patients. The cause for concern in these kids of places would be asbestos, extreme dust, and some types of molds and mildews are toxic to humans. One might also beware of animal carcasses and droppings -- hantavirus.

How's your appetite after seeing that one?

Plastic tape label guns were used from the 50s-70s. I have not seen one in ages. My parents used one to label objects in the house in order to help my little sister learn to read.