Abandoned Power Plant

PinkTavo

Not sure where to put this, so posted on the Main Wall. Having fun trying to identify equipment.

http://www.abandonedamerica.us/portside-power-plant

STEVEusaPA

Weird that it's both beautiful and sad (to me).

Solid_Fuel_Man

Completely agree @STEVEusaPA. We have an abandoned nuclear air force base which was closed in 1994, favorite place to explore when I was younger. Nothe much left now.

Industrial buildings all have a realistic life, and now inefficient and outdated, decay seems to always prevail.

Taylor

Robert_25

Thanks for sharing. Reminds me of the Huber and St. Nicholas breakers in the coal region of PA.

Harvey Ramer

I toured an abandoned gold mine and processing plant in Silverton Colorado this summer. I don't have the words to describe it, but when I walk through something like that, I can see the people working. I look at the machines and I see how they function. I see the wrenches lay by a piece of equipment and I know someone attended and adjusted the machine daily. Someone went to work there every day to make enough money to feed and clothe their family. There were very few Osha regs and everywhere you looked was something that could kill you. Everything from arsenic to open machinery drives. A slip of the foot in the wrong place would be the end. Yet they toiled away relentlessly and built the America we know. God bless the ones before and let there spirit live on through us.

STEVEusaPA

Had lots of family work at GE and Westinghouse. Used to love as a kid open house when we got to walk through and tour-giant Goliath sized machinery.
There also used to be a locomotive repair factory (already closed in 1970), that we used to go play/explore. Turntable outside.

Bob Bona_4

These places are fascinating. There's a local mental hospital here in CT, I was lucky to get a tour of the powerhouse when it was functioning still, in the early 90s. It's been closed and fenced off for the last 20 years. Really, really scary the asbestos that's hanging down like curtains off everything now.

Steam

Is that your site? Have you been inside this plant? So many things to identify. There is a nice older style high board where they conducted electrical switching from. Also paralelled the turbine generators to the electrical bus from there. The thing on the pedestal could be an alarm panel / status indicator panel.

The large things you see under the turbines, and also the picture that has no turbine over it are the condensers. To the left are the main condensate pumps.

The picture of the set of three fans are forced draft and induced draft fans. Two are ID, and looks like one FD, as the FD draws air from the surrounding space. The ID fans pull exhaust out of the boiler, passed the air-preheater or economizer or combination of the two if they were installed. Look below the ID fans to see if there is an aph and economizer installed.

There are also some breaker compartments there, these might be air operated (looks really old) so you would have probably seen some air compressors or remnants of them in the electrical galleries.

The horn might be operated by compressed air, and was used for letting individuals know if there was trouble in the plant.

There is also the coal conveyors, and coal house that conveyed the coal to the bunkers. That house was probably used to haul ash away to a barge as well. You should see tracks and maybe ash cars still there in the basement.



I would deffinetely be down to tour the plant and offer some insight to how things operated, and also identify various pieces of equipment.....that is depending on where in the US this is.

Fred

When I started my career, I worked for a local company that employed 28,000 people locally, mostly manufacturing, foundry, plating, finished retail point of sale products. We had 33 buildings, on campus and all of them were heated by a company owned steam plant. Virtually all of the buildings were connected by underground pedestrian tunnels that also housed all the steam pipes to each building. All buildings are gone now but there are sections of tunnel still existing, especially those that crossed under main streets and under sidewalks. They were sealed at each end before the buildings were torn down.

PinkTavo

Steam...no, this is from a website my Cousin regularly copies me on FaceBook that documents "Abandoned America". Typically they just have buildings, this is the first one I have seen that has equipment; though there may be more in their archive. They usually don't disclose the exact location of the buildings.

Steam

PinkTavo said:

Steam...no, this is from a website my Cousin regularly copies me on FaceBook that documents "Abandoned America". Typically they just have buildings, this is the first one I have seen that has equipment; though there may be more in their archive. They usually don't disclose the exact location of the buildings.

Shame, would be an awesome place to tour. I might have an idea of it's location, but could be wrong. If you get anymore info about the place, or have questions about equipment you can PM me. Thanks