781 Comments for Old Saint Nicholas Coal Breaker

This is why Motts is posting these pictures and I am not. I get a fear of heights on a freaking ladder nevermind climbing up this place.

I see three spaces for fuses, either for 3-phase power or various parts of a machine.

Redneck escalator! ROTFLOL!!!

Yee-agg! *shudder* *grim imagination* Appropriately named Motts! I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that horrid thing!

@Brenda - so there IS a belt that goes overtop of those "stretched-V" rollers. I wondered. I've seen a bunch of these things in my life and thought "How did they keep stuff from getting stuck between the rollers?"

@BKWOntario - almost certainly 2005. I wonder if it isn't some old hand who snuck back in to sign his name on a piece of equipment he used to use a lot.

That's the 'shell' of a big-*** fan blower, usually used for circulation. I've seen them a bunch in various industrial areas in video games and IRL.

An electric-driven fan unit goes in the center, pulls air through a grate (to keep some oaf from sticking their hand in the whirling blades) and whooshes it out the side-pipe you see to the right. Then the air goes through whatever ductwork it's supposed to go.

The bit with teeth isn't used for sawing, those are gear teeth for a rack-and-pinion system to adjust something for size or space, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rack_and_pinion

I'm almost positive it's worked by one of the two big handwheels, probably the bottom one from where it's positioned.

@ Steve - thank you very much for the background. It looked like something that did "top-down" work but I couldn't determine what. And how fitting that the metal to be punched is called a "victim!"

Daaaang. So this thing was, if I understand correctly, dragged along the ground? What for?

Ah ha! I've seen one of these in Fallout3, in an abandoned industrial location, you go down one while doing some virtual urbexing for steel ingots. And that one doesn't have nice neat walls around the side either...don't fall or it's AAAAAAH-*CRUNCH*!

So what exactly ARE these things? A conveyer belt minus the belt?

Oh wait, nevermind, that would be a bad idea because someone might piece together where you were by following your recent galleries and checking those locations on a large-scale map. I'm dumb.

7 years? I thought you posted pictures as you put galleries together.

All kidding aside, these buttons and switches are safe because this is an isolated building where you can see if power lines are still running to the place. Not unlike that power plant, with the one photo of the panel with some power-grid status lights still glowing! That one gave me a pretty good "EEK!" moment!

@bobo - Yep, riding to the rescue facing backwards on his horse!