Power Station Switchboard Pictures

just beautiful. i've worked with that vintage switchgear and so much of it has been scrapped. i can't imagine where we could even buy that kind of workmanship today. thanks, sam in pa.

I believe you start by buying your slate from the Corris / Tallylyn area, where it's first cut, then "enamelled" (some sort of stove enamel). It's not slate in its natural state and the North Wales slates don't take to being stoved.

We were up there camping a few weeks ago.

It's a kind of mineral material made from slate, possibly powedered and mixed with a binder.

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Rushden, UK snipped-for-privacy@prepair.co.uk

Marinite? That stuff's newer though.

It's the original 1930's board, no maker's name anywhere. The finish looks too good to be native slate, unless it has been machined/processed.

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Rushden, UK snipped-for-privacy@prepair.co.uk

See this as well:

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Rushden, UK snipped-for-privacy@prepair.co.uk

having worked on this type panel, i can appreciate them. i was looking at the copper work switches and such. when we changed out the panels on an upgrade, i tried my best to capture the carbon pile regulator unit. it was on a sendzimir rolling mill for stainless. that mill is now in the smithsonian museum. my best, sam

I understand that there are three more to be converted, hopefully we will have a chance to save those as well.

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Rushden, UK snipped-for-privacy@prepair.co.uk

I bought a piece of slate from a Wesh quarry while on holiday some years ago. It has been polished to a mirror finish and has been a shelf in my fathers house since then.

John

Top quality hard slate will take an excellent finish. Our hearth has several slabs of green cumbrian slate that have been polished. Lovely surface, to many pyrites and fossils for a switch board panel though.

Which means Cumbrian, not Welsh, and so it's greenish (sometimes bluish). The Welsh slates won't take this level of polish and so the "enamalling" process was developed. If you see a Victorian slate clock or mantelpiece, that's enamelled slate.