OT: 1909 San Francisco Cable Car video

Road and track road test of same.

Thank you for the trip. I've only been to SF once, but made sure to ride the cable car and stop at the museum/power house. Nice memory, sure beats the daylights out of the political crud.

When I was fixing mainframe computers in the 60's we had a system in near St. Mary's cathedral. Most mornings at about 6am we would get an error light. turned out we were on the same power line as the cable cars. So massive dip in the power when they turned on the about 1000 hp motor. PGE wired us to a different feed.

Well, thay bytes! ;-)

A freind of mine works in a lab at WPAFB in Dayton. They have to call they power company before turning on some of their motors so they can be ready to add more capacity. If they don't, they can brown out half of Dayton.

On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:29:52 -0800 (PST), the infamous " snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com" scrawled the following:

I've had the pleasure of both riding those cars and seeing the museum in SF. If you're ever in the area, DO stop by that museum.

-- Some days, it's not even worth chewing through the restraints.

Gunner

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

Absolutely fascinating!!

I just finished watching it for the 3rd time, and each time more details of the "times" crop up. Bookmarked!

Gunner

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

I worked for NCR for a lot of years. While getting my engineering degree. They used both coal and wood from the cabinet shop to run a Cogeneration plant at the Dayton factory. Since that is closed, maybe the power company needs to build bigger plant. :>)

Was that the cash register plant? Mendelson's bought it and the existing inventory over 20 years ago, and continued to sell parts for the mechanical models to NCR's overseas customers.

Yup, that was the plant. We went to school in Building 31 and 26 in 1964 for the NCR 315 computer. Interesting factoid about building 26. Was where they took apart and then reproduced the German Enigma code machines. Later they build a training center on Swamp Road, that was renamed Spring Valley south of town, near the Dayton Mall. They have tore down the training center also.

A lot of buildings have been torn down in the 20+ years since I moved from the area. I lived about 30 minutes south of Dayton for a long time.

In the '60s & '70s Mendelson's had tons of precision metal parts from NCR & the military. One time, they had thousands of different glass code wheels from an obsolete crypto system..

That was when they were at 316 Linden ave. From aerial photos, it looks like that building was torn down and something else built there. After they moved, a screw manufacturing business leased the building, then there was a fire a few years later. I never saw how badly it was damaged, but I heard there was suspicion of arson.

Should have rigged a huge Soft Starter of some sort on the cable car powerhouse, too. Don't know whether they can do a Delta-Wye starter that big, but it would cut the surge...

Same thing with a friend who was Chief Electrician at Walt Disney Studios, Burbank. Burbank runs their own steam power plant, and buys excess from the regional grid.

They were filming Darby O'Gill & the Little People on a soundstage, and to get the forced perspective of the Leprechauns waaaay off in the back and the Humans in focus on the same frame of film at the same time (one pass through the camera, no post processing or matte work) they had several Million CP of lighting on the set, and the massive air conditioning to match.

This was 1959, when "Fast" Color Movie Film was ISO 25, and they had the aperture down to a pin-point for the depth of field.

First morning of real filming, they just threw the "Company Switch" (Main Breaker) to turn on all the lights at once - and the surge blew their local feeder breaker and damn near dropped the whole city.

After Burbank Power & Light read them the riot act, the Studios had to call in every morning before throwing the company switch on any sound stage. So a Lineman could go out in the substation yard and physically hold the breaker trip mechanism arm, to keep it from tripping on the inrush that was coming.

Fast forward 30 years, and someone finally started wondering why they were /still doing this/ out of rote habit...

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LOL!!!

Gunner "Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton