Sarah at the Georgetown Steam Plant!

[@DeviantOllam]

Wow, new hair!! 💚💛💚💛💚

[@kpanic23]

Protective earth hair! I love it! No ground straps needed anymore!

[@meosalami5180]

​@@kpanic23That's IEC colours. Americans would NEVER 🤦🏻‍♂️😝

[@danielpirone8028]

I would love a seattle / Georgetown meetup . ( sent from the penthouse under the Rainier R )

[@LexsZero]

I've just finished watching your fire code talk, and here you are again!

[@DeviantOllam]

@@LexsZero Sarah and I were messaging each other this morning whilst watching each other's videos! ☺️👍

[@billmoran3812]

Sarah, I spent a lot of my early days as a young engineer working in steam plants of that vintage. The tour showed a lot of equipment I’m very familiar with. Most of the auxiliary machinery in that plant was probably driven by DC motors, hence the many large rheostats. As you toured various parts of the plant, I could “feel” the heat that was always present, in some cases blisteringly hot. So much so you would have felt your exposed skin burning as you passed through the area. Places like above the boilers you would not have wanted to remain for more than a few minutes. For me, walking through the plant now it would be an eerie experience, the coolness of the concrete structure, the silence of the machinery. It would be like entering the tomb of a great beast that no longer lives. Very cool tour! I guess I am officially old now, when familiar places become museums. Lol. BTW, I laughed out loud over that “Trans-1” comment. Hilarious!

[@elliesagestar]

Slaying with the hair; Trans. bank no. 1 🤣🤣🤣 reminds me of local transportation company TopTrans 😂😂 allways funny seeing it plastered all over their trucks

[@ziginox]

Huh, I didn't know I need a Sarah/Connections Museum and Urbex crossover, but here we are and I'm loving it!

[@heckelphon]

Ah, there's nothing quite like an open-frame 3-phase knife switch! Try opening that under load!

[@BlueSkyScholar]

For more fun close one into a short.

[@2ndfloorsongs]

​@@BlueSkyScholar Which of those movements above I would prefer to do, depends on how inductive the load is.

[@zigforjustice]

11:20 -- Beautiful power board. That stone is * *chef's kiss* *

[@joeschoebel1458]

marble panels. back from a completely different era

[@2ndfloorsongs]

Not just classy. I'd love to have some of the stuff I work on mounted on beautiful non-conductive marble.

[@DoktorApe]

The Georgetown crossover I didn’t know I needed. Lucky getting to see all the non public stuff.

[@don1857]

The large rheostats most likely controlled the field winding voltage (exciters) on the generators making it possible to increase or decrease the output voltage according to demand. The automated one was probably connected to a governor to provide rudimentary voltage regulation. Great video.

[@LenKusov]

God that plant is in amazing shape, which makes sense I guess - instead of ending up like so many historic industrial sites where they ran it til everything was on the edge of failure and then gutted for scrap, abandoned for 30-50 years, and then turned into gentrification lofts (RIP Battersea), it spent the majority of its in-service life as a peaker/auxilliary/emergency plant, where it seldom ran but was always kept in tip-top operating shape for when it was needed. It spent 20 years in an operable state, fully ready to move as soon as someone lit it up, before it was officially decommissioned but AIPed. It's like if Chris Boden's hydro dam made a love child with Battleship New Jersey. I would bet money that, if some reason for its recomissioning were to happen, that plant would start right up after 2 days with a skeleton crew, grease guns, WD40, and a looooot of Scotch Brite. Hell, if they REALLY wanted to make the museum experience REALLY educational, they could quite easily convert it back to oil firing from the current coal setup - that's how it was in the first place - and do a couple days a year for "hot" tours, cause it's pretty much complete and still got a grid tie. Seeing stuff like this in mothballs, eerily silent and rusting away into dust just can't compare to seeing tired old iron still doing its job just as well as it did a century ago.

[@holysirsalad]

> It's like if Chris Boden's hydro dam made a love child with Battleship New Jersey. GET OUT OF MY WATCH HISTORY But also yes. This video was a fantastic surprise!

[@HiVisionary1125]

Honestly, Battersea was a serious lost opportunity. In Britain for a number of years, MPs from country districts would repeatedly say "if nuclear power is so safe, why don't you build it closer to the cities?" and the AGRs were specifically designed to be located in areas of high population concentration. There was actually a suggestion in Parliament to re-power Battersea with a nuclear reactor. Considering that it was a CHP plant, that would have been an amazing demonstration.

[@LenKusov]

@@HiVisionary1125 Yeah, too bad it went end-of-life around the time nuclear power's public image went south. Also, the main reason it was decommissioned was the turbogenerators being too outdated and worn out, that's the big draw of coal-nuclear conversion: half the price of the plant's been paid already, the non-reactor hardware doesn't care what makes the steam. Glad nuclear's public image is finally coming around again, there's a lotta talk lately about coal conversions and more loose regulations when advanced, intrinsically safe designs are in use.

[@HiVisionary1125]

@@LenKusov Interestingly, the Piqua Atomic Power Station in Ohio, a small experimental plant which used an organic-moderated reactor, didn't have its own turbogenerators. It delivered steam over a pipe bridge into the existing municipal plant on the other side of the river, replacing steam from the coal-fired boilers.

[@thomasfox4513]

I'm a little jealous of the cool stuff you get to mess with.

[@3v068]

Regardless of what you post, i love every second of it. You guys have so much love and dedication to the things you know and keeping old tech alive. Much love to all of you!

[@deeann730]

thank goodness for the ubiquity of the latin prefix trans-, truly a cornerstone of our culture

[@charlescheeld4767]

WOW love the video, and like everybody else, your hair and personality, I think you have some ADHD like we do, lol. Looks like you spent 10 minutes trying to isolate the short and then 20 hours checking the place out. And thank you for taking the time to do that and for throwing in the side jokes and comments as you did. It made our day and can't wait for part 2, part 3 if necessary, and ultimately bringing that wonderfully magnificent antique phone system back from the dead. I know you have a working and personal life, but we do love the time and work you do for the museum. Please make more videos when you can (without sacrificing too much) and include your unique personality and museum coworkers/friends.

[@aftbit]

Wait... did you ever actually fix the phones or find the problem? Cool museum but I was here for the phone content 😆

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

Nope. Back at it again today

[@starlite528]

@@ConnectionsMuseum I sure hope there's a part two "the fault" and "the fix"

[@sirthomasnolan]

One of those times where a second set of hands of very helpful, plus a few radios.

[@jd3497]

@33:09 Stepstool where the legs have insulators on their ends. Keep an operator or repair person from grounding out to the steel floor in case of an accidental touch to a live conductor or open switch contact.

[@charlescheeld4767]

Talk about a disintegration ray

[@4ffff2ee]

i'll be honest, i know nothing about telephones and stuff, but i do like watching your videos. i can tell you're passionate about it and it makes it fun to watch

[@brettster3331]

Hi Sarah, Thank you for the fascinating four of the Georgetown Steam Plant, I had no idea that was open to tours.

[@KeritechElectronics]

Incredible industrial beauty! Reminds me of my urbex days in late 2000s when I walked factories in my old city, including a power plant that was soon to be renovated and repurposed. 8:25 resisting asbestos they could! If it can't be disposed of, they at least should use some encapsulation coating. 18:47 my money is on you! I'll open a savings account and *maybe* could afford my bottom surgery someday... Haha. Not in the late-stage capitalism. Nice hair BTW :)

[@Thegonagle]

“Tag yourself...” 😂 Now I need to find a piece of industrial equipment to tag myself after. What a pleasant surprise this turned into as I found myself in the midst of an insider tour of the plant.

[@FruitMuff1n]

This was actually insane! The whole building is literally the machine, so cool!

[@jonnyb1963]

Thanks Sarah for ALL of your videos! I love em, keep em coming!

[@DrJaneLuciferian]

Really old school electromagnetical systems are sooo cool. Thanks for sharing this with us :^)

[@chriholt]

Wow - thanks for the tour!

[@ackermichael6]

I love everything about this: the aesthetics of the building and equipment, the history, and your commentary. I worked for a time a Fisher Mills on Harbor island. Oh how I wish someone had done a video walk-around the that amazing building!

[@noisytim]

Wow! What an amazing place! Thanks for the tour

[@Antney-u6j]

“Scungy” is a new word I just learned from you, thank you! Scungy is quite a cromulent word, isn’t it?

[@jimprice1959]

Sarah - Great tour. It's nice to see an old power plant video taken by someone with a modicum of knowledge about what we are seeing. I'm interested in how the coal was handled and where it came from.

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

Fascinating as always Sarah. I'm wondering now how you will find the fault. I'd be tempted to measure the tiny residual voltage at each of the switches between conductors and from each to the conduit with the lamp circuit energised, then use a milliohmmeter across the same points at each switch without power to the circuit. That might localise the fault and even provide a rough ratio of the distance to the short, and even perhaps allow a cuicuit layout to be inferred if all the conductors are the same cross section.. Using a NanoVNA as a TDR in a very noisy electrical environment could be tricky. A 1 kHz telecomms tone oscillator wouldn't work, as the skin depth in iron is less than 70 micrometres, so the current on the outside of the conduit would be negligible as the steel is likely to be way more than six skin depths. The fields would be confined to the inner surface of the tube. If the short is definitely from wire to conduit, then running an amp or two at DC across the conductor and conduit would allow me to use a DC microvoltmeter to probe at points a few feet apart until it dropped to zero beyond the short. I bet you find it using a simple and elegant technique and astound us all! Cannot wait for the next exciting episode.

[@MeriaDuck]

Trans bank #1 ❤ Literal steam stuff, beautiful walk-around. If they have their own channel on KZbin, I'd be happy to check 😂

[@mfbfreak]

Oh wow. Those chain driven rheostats and wheels! I'd kill to snoop around in that power station!

[@erickvond6825]

This was a fun change of pace. I super love old power gear. Being something of a self educated electrical engineer.

[@Platypi007]

Wonderful video, thanks for sharing! Mildly triggering of my fear of heights at times, lol. Glad I could watch safely from my computer screen and not be climbing those ladders and walking those catwalks myself.

[@musiqtee]

Fantastic tour, thanks Sarah! 👍 23:32 Eh, got some funny vibes - Long walk through a seriously scruffy & complicated steam plant, and _“…here’s Boeing Field…”._ Well, Boeing these days… (Yes, no connections, but… Connections Museum, OK…?) 😅

[@sirthomasnolan]

I worked at a steel mill for 7 months a few years ago (laid off March 2020), and they had "pipe schedules", basically schematics for all the conduits of where they go and what's in them. I imagine this place probably used to have them.

[@louis_makes]

Whoa, that’s one hell of a cool building. Clearly from a time before safety 😁. So much asbestos! Love the hair!

[@mackfisher4487]

Neat stuff, The early electrical generating stations with what we now call analog systems or electro-mechanical are so beautiful. Compared to our new sanitary computer controlled system. One spin off the old systems they would survive an EMP and didn't use exotic components which will be unavailable after say 10-years. I love museums that show the way engineers conquered a problem and then look at the way those same problems are accomplished in today's. The Air Force Museum in Dayton Ohio another same kind of educational platform.

[@krux702]

Always exciting to see a new Connections Museum video. What a location to get to wander around in. Also the new hair color is amazing. Love it.

[@espressobuzz1253]

This is really cool to see. I love the steam plant. So happy to hear the buzzer!

[@repeded_loot_main5403]

This looks so cool!

[@AdamChristensen]

Me: "Wait, Sarah is visiting Georgetown? Here in Washington, DC? And there's a phone system?... oh... There's another Georgetown... 😂"

[@SubspaceWinter]

Your videos are always so great i love watching them!! 💜 (also love the hair and vibes, I had a similar color not long ago!)

[@АлексейЖиторчук]

Thank you for this great tour! The sound of this place with all the buzzing, crackling and echoing is so immersive! Hope we will get the second part soon, and thank you for the great content! P.S. this place reminded me of the Aperture science facility from Portal 2

[@cferrarini]

Its great to know that this things still exists and someone is looking for them. This Plant could easily be asset for a great game, the player would just have to learn its quirks and solve its issues...

[@gymprofessor329]

Stunning to see all that hardware mounted in stone!!

[@princesswalt4010]

Thanks for the tour! This gives me a flashback of when I worked on a movie and the set was at the world’s first automated assembly line at the ford factory in Detroit. The shear scale of it all! And the best part was the asbestos warnings where we had to leave the site when the level got too high. That was the first and last time I ever got a nosebleed from being inside a building…. All those white covered pipes! Yikes! Very freaking cool!

[@TrevorBrass]

So cool! Awesome of you to keep these phone systems operating.

[@holysirsalad]

This was such a marvelous surprise. Thank you so much for the tour! A very nice change of pace to be shown some of this stuff from a person with a technical eye rather than "hmmmm this machine appears to be a machine" and "wow it's so old". TIL what those mystery knobs are for! Not just voltage regulation, but HOW! Thank you again, looking forward to Part 2, even if it is just a "had to shimmy along a pipe and fix something a mouse chewed" lol

[@matthunter1424]

Ummm, did the phones get fixed?? lol ;-) thanks for the tour. Passed by many times.

[@jussikuusela7345]

Without reading other comments, I imagine that the resistor might be in series with a generator's exciter circuit. The rotor is excited by DC through slip rings and the rotor current varies the output voltage - pretty much like in the alternator in a car - so they can have a stable-ish output voltage while keeping the frequency. In the car alternator this doubles for stabilizing the voltage over a large frequency range. Some cheap gensets actually vary their frequency to keep the voltage, and this is fine for incandescent lamps and resistive loads, rectifiers feeding DC circuits - but not for inductive and synchronous motors for example. Also, the motor MIGHT be a repulsion motor. That would have a commutator like a DC motor, but runs on AC. The brushes are shorted together and are suspended on an assembly that can be rotated around the axle so they make contact at a variable angle. This allows adjusting speed and direction by a simple handle or by levers and gears.

[@JimmytheCow2000]

Love the new hair! Loled at the "trans bank #1" lol

[@ExplorerOffgrid]

awesome! The granite backboard of the control panel is really neet.

[@jerryfraley5904]

Always a great morning when @ConnectionsMuseum posts a new video! I love power plant urbex videos, and this one did not fail to entertain (for other interesting ones, I suggest looking at the channel "The Proper People", an urbex channel that has a few videos of old power plants). Has this plant done some kind of mitigation work on the asbestos? It looked like it had been sealed, but still. Having grown up in WV, I must say that's the cleanest coal bin I have ever seen. As for the siren, I would have taped some cardboard over the front of the horn to dampen it's loudness and continue to use it as an audible indicator while circuit tracing. Good luck and thanks Sarah!

[@ShayBlez]

Thanks for taking us on an adventure. :]

[@kaibroeking9968]

Up to today, I have only ever seen vertical steam turbines in very small installations, like turbo pumps in rockets. I have never seen them in a power station, before. Thanks very much for the video tour!

[@ty.Tibor123]

Amazing. Thank you

[@SuburbanDon]

In the late 60's I had one of those (extremely loud) buzzers my grandfather got from the old Budd factory in Philadelphia. He was an electrician there.

[@sysmatt]

Love this! Feel free to make more of this!

[@garthhowe297]

Great tour...but it triggered more phobias/fear than any film I have seen.

[@markowen4326]

I need to do a tour of the Stemplant, haven't been there since the Big Black "final" show in 1987.

[@royreynolds108]

You did not mention that there used to be a conveyor belt to deliver the coal to the coal pockets. What company built the boilers, I couldn't tell? The boilers are water-tube or fire on the outside instead of on the inside. Power plants like that are pumped for pressure and fired for temperature of the steam. Neat tour.

[@delwoodbarker]

I keep seeing numerous industrial chase scenes. And acrophobia. Thanks for the thrills.

[@josh6715]

love this channel so many different videos etc

[@cranklabexplosion-labcentr8245]

Homie is standing where Curt Kobain and Mark Arm saw Big Blacks final show 🤯🤯

[@JayJay-88]

Awesome, thank you for taking the time to show this to us. 😍

[@HiVisionary1125]

I'm scheduled to take a tour of a working nuclear power plant in a couple of weeks -- much more modern, not even 50 years old. A British AGR, actually, design not built anywhere else. Vertical-shaft steam turboalternators are definitely uncommon. Most of the time you only see vertical-shaft machines in hydro plants, and not always there : the "Bayernwerk" plant at Kochel-am-See, contemporaneous with this plant and very big for its time, uses horizontal-shaft water turbines and generators. The elevated space you refer to as the "coal pocket" is what I would call the "coal bunker", and I don't care if the descending chutes have been plugged -- I'd hate to fall in one and get wedged!

[@k7iq]

Fantastic tour ! Thank you !

[@sanbell6951]

If the short appeared suddenly, i would start by asking if there was any work like construction or other done recently and were. I would then ask if there were any rodent problems, vandalism or water damage recently etc. After that i would do a very quick visual scan of the area to see if anything unusual stood out.

[@unixerius6632]

My fear of heights was kicking in, with you walking around the control board with your back to the depths. Ugh D: EDIT: Oh wow it got horribly bad when you panned at the stop/start sign, when gesturing "the people down there".. Wow, not a place for me :D EDIT 2: "And that walkway, is how you change those light bulbs!" NONOnononononoooooooo >_

[@hugoboyce9648]

That was amazing!

[@joedolphin]

There is a chance that since the horn is 120 volt and that light bulbs were used as indicators someone may have tied the control wires directly into the lighting circuit along the way... Or the fact it is a museum it may have been rewired as a demonstration, hence the switch and not a button..

[@charlescheeld4767]

Good points

[@JPStewart]

Ok, this was awesome. I'd donate quite a bit for an in-person field trip plant tour led by Sarah. I've done the open house days twice now.

[@gnebulon]

All the dust in this video made me sneeze!

[@roylamkin7177]

Absolutely amazing

[@johnopalko5223]

That was a wonderful tour of the old powerplant but you left the big question unanswered. Did you ever find the fault and what/where was it? How long did it take? My inner troubleshooter wants to know. EDIT: Fixed a typo.

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

Not yet. Back at it again today!

[@johnopalko5223]

@@ConnectionsMuseum Well, good luck. Finding a fault in an ever-branching parallel circuit is a royal pain. My first thought was to use time domain reflectometry. It won't tell you where the fault is but it will tell you approximately how far away it is. That may or may not be useful but it could help you decide where to begin searching.

[@GusFernCa]

This video made me more squeamish than anything I've seen this year! What's NOT the stuff of nightmares here? The high voltage or current? The narrow corridors? Acrophobia with narrow catwalks? Giant hot boilers? Steam? Coal dust? Not to mention rabid animals making nests. And maybe just bumping into someone with green hair. Who needs Quake? Here it is for real. Thanks sarah for the virtual tour done so matter-of-fact-ly but I will NOT be visiting this place in person.

[@Madness832]

In the boiler room, did they have guys shovelin' coal into the boilers (like those scenes in Titanic)?

[@charlescheeld4767]

I imagine they did, with no masks or safety gear either.

[@TeslaTales59]

Those are cool old phones. One of them looks like a "Dead man's phone"!

[@notalizardperson]

Yep. I definitely have a fear of heights.

[@mafarnz]

How did coal get into the coal bins ? I didn’t see any conveyors or roof hatches or anything like that, and that’s a lot of material to be moving around all the time.

[@chip2139]

That plant is down right scary. I've been in it.

[@K_C_Oaks]

Are the panel faces granite? Or something like that? They're so pretty.

[@devinmrn]

I'm trans bank #1! ❤

[@charlescheeld4767]

Too Awesome

[@tortysoft]

To start with, I'd either put a sock in the buzzer - or disconnect it and put in a less powerful one :-) - which you did... Another trick is to use the system used by telecoms in Strowger days, send a pulse down the cable and measure the time it takes to bounce back - halve that and use the speed of light to see how far away it is :-) BUT in a place this complex that wouldn't help much ! What a building, what tech ! Wow. What are the red stickers for ? Please don't say auction numbers!

[@tomschmidt381]

Great tour, I've never seen the inside of an old school steam power plant. But don't leave us in suspense, were you ever able find the horn short? As to the phones Are some local battery and others common battery? The couple you showed looked like different vintage. Or did that one local battery phone power the entire party line network except the horn?

[@user-xc9ck5gr5i]

Could you use a TDR device to find how far away the short is?

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

I think the short is only a meter away, actually. I am not convinced at all that there is a short in the distant signaling circuit. Unfortunately, I think its in a very difficult place to get to. We will see.

[@WhiskeyZGT]

IS THAT A BSG COMMAND PIN ON YOUR JACKET?!?!?!? Absolutly nerding out right now.

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

So say we all!

[@WowplayerMe]

This building looks like the perfect place for a Batman villain to setup a secret lair in.

[@andrewwyard8063]

Part two, find the relay that runs those lamps and siren.

[@alaricsnellpym]

You found the alley between the boilers claustrophobic? I was FINE with that. But my innards noticeably contracted with terror in the bit before when you were up near the roof of the building! ...oh god you went up high again after 😐

[@holysirsalad]

After the Trans Banks (lol), on your way up the stairs by the crane, the camera catches a glimpse of something that I think is labelled "M.G.No2 STARTING". About 20:24 Guessing a Motor-Generator for AC/DC conversion, but really curious what exactly that thing is! Capacitor? Relay? Battery?

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

I’m not sure! MG2 is an AC motor coupled to a DC generator. Could be capacitors or a set of autotransformers for starting. I’d have to get a closer look and ask someone.

[@Ranger_Kevin]

Did you manage to find the short circuit in the end?

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

Not yet! Maybe I will in part 2 :)

[@cedarwaxwing3509]

OK, a dumb question: is a “steam plant” an electrical generating station (using steam to drive generators), or is it a plant that generates steam for heating distribution to nearby buildings or areas?

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

The steam plant is an electrical generating station. It uses steam to drive generators, which provided power for electric rail in Seattle in the early 1900s

[@cedarwaxwing3509]

@@ConnectionsMuseum Thank you very much. Love your videos and would love to get to the Connections Museum sometime. That old steam plant is quite fascinating!

[@99icd]

Yes, it took me a while to figure out that "steam plant" = "electricity generating station". Maybe a trans-Atlantic issue :)

[@charlescheeld4767]

Glad ypu asked it because I wasn't sure either. Lol.

[@holysirsalad]

In my part of the world most facilities named "steam plant" are indeed just that. Some might have cogeneration but primarily provides steam for district heating or other processes. Most thermal power generating stations use steam, be it geothermal, concentrated solar, external combustion, or spicy rocks Might be named that way to distinguish from a hydro facility?

[@charlescheeld4767]

I thought I posted this already but looks like it didn't make it. Sorry if it did and this is a duplicate. As strategy to isolate the fault, try temporarily disconnecting the super loud klaxon and connect a light bulb or buzzer before you go crazy/deaf. Then, disconnect everything except that one phone and the light/buzzer. Once you get that working then connect the other branches 1 by 1 until it shorts out again--and there is the short. Or you could just commit to replacing that 100-year-old (paper insulation?) with new cable, clean/inspect all the connectors/components, and hope that fixes it. Also, @joedolphin might be on to something. It may have been rewired as a museum demo or just to scare the cr@p out of people on demand, and all you need to is figure out how to wire it back. Just some ideas. We're rooting for you Sarah?

[@lordmuntague]

Good grief! This is seriously cool!

[@DrBrianM2]

Nice place to place.

[@WOFFY-qc9te]

Us Boomers could burn carbon better than gen Z's. Lovely asbestos bus rope and I can smell the CFC's in those PFC here in the UK. and the sound of the cast stair treads bring's back memories of Fiddlers Ferry power and Drax stations which a little bit bigger than yours. . Great work and thanks for a very well conducted tour. Ps I think there is a latching relay box on that ringer circuit with its own dry cell.

[@michaelestabrook2018]

power board loks like an early version of the krul power statin in forbidden planet.

[@itsonlybrad2278]

I enjoyed your foray into (not)urbex Sarah, thanks! 😁

[@NicodemusParadiso]

Going for peak steampunk I see!

[@25gatimus]

The ambient noise sounds like Portal.