All week long the forecast was calling for a high of near 70F. In my mind, this meant that there might be some fair weather explorers who wanted to swing by. God bless them on their investigations but I prefer to be alone, so I did my best to get on the road early. I did fairly well and was parked on Baltimore Ave by 945am. I wanted to ride a bit before hitting up the plant so I went up Ave O to about 117th. I went up Green Bay for a bit – so far I’ve done this all many times before – then swerved over to Burley and stayed as close as I could to the river and the railroad tracks. Found some strange dirt roads back there which made for some interesting riding. Lots of fly dumped trash. I had planned to head up to 100th to cross the river but suddenly I was getting anxious so I took 106th instead.
I had a few missions in mind for the day so I wanted to get to work ASAP. The most critical one was to secure some lumber for a restoration and another build I am working on (both will be revealed when complete). I brought a cross cut saw and a tape measure and was on the hunt for some legit 2″ lumber. This would make date it to 1964 or earlier, ironically the same year that Acme and Interlake merged.
I started out in the electric shop. With so much collapsed there is plenty of available lumber. But all of it was 1.5″ and none of it had much character. I did find some 2×12 that I was ready to take if I had to but I kept looking. I checked out the south end of the storehouse which is also collapsed but just more junk. Finally, I went up to the mezzanine. The north end is also collapsing and I knew some boards would be exposed. None of those were any good but I did find something else.
These must have been used to hold some pipe or shafts or some other long items. They are indeed 2″ and have character by the ton! They were secured by a cross beam with a single nail into each upright. I found another junk piece of lumber and used it as a hammer to push the nails out. A couple more nails were used to secure it to the green toeboard. I just bent the upright back and forth a few times and eventually it pulled out. I accidentally let it drop downstairs but it survived just fine. I had planned to cut whatever I found into manageable sections to secure to the rear rack of my bike but decided to leave this as is. I carried it to the driveway next to the gate house and planned to come back with my truck before I headed home to scoop it up.
My next mission was to grab the chess pieces I had found in the lunch room last week. I have a plan to make a board (from more Acme lumber, of course). I brought a bag and dumped them in.
They got a bath in some Simple Green when I got home. I looked at a couple sites where you can buy individual pieces but I was having trouble finding any that were even a half way decent match. Then I found chesshouse.com which said to just email them with the measurements of what you are looking for and they will let you know what they have. I sent that email with the info and pics they requested, waiting on a response but fingers crossed.
I have a habit of overturning any kind of flat metal or wood that I find in the hopes it will be a sign. Unfortunately it never seems to be. I must have walked by this one about 100 times and ignored it but today I gave it a flip and look what I found! This no doubt refers to the sketchy mezzanine I just took my lumber from!
Of course I want to continue to outfit the lunch room for a future nighttime visit so I went back to one of the offices on the east side of the storehouse where I saw some cool furniture. There are a couple shelves but they are pretty huge. But there is also a really nice bench I’ve looked at many times. I think this was a small changing room because there is a toilet in there and I also found some FR gear in there hanging on the wall. Good place to sit and put your boots on. And a good bench for the lunch room I think!
From there I really got into prime Acme mode. That means walking around very slowly and decompressing. Listening to the wind and enjoying the sensation of your blood pressure dropping. I went over toward coal handling and had a sudden revelation. I have a quart jar of coke I pulled from an oven long ago. I started thinking a jar of coal would be nice as well when I remembered the Pyrex flask I have sitting lonely and empty on my standing desk in my bedroom. So I went over to inspect one of the many coal mounds left abaonddoned so long ago. It is interesting because you can clearly see that some have been pulverized and others have not. I can’t fit much through the top of this flask so I had to find just the right size pieces. I used the bag my chess pieces are in to bring them home. Funny thing is I had some leftovers (I took a bit too much home) so I threw it into my garbage can. How much coal is in garbage cans in my city right now?
After that I suddenly remembered an old and unfinished mission. Probably a year ago I found some large pits in the coal handling area. Some were filled with water but others you could jump down into. In one of them I had found some kind of (what I remembered) voltmeter. I did not take it and then it started bothering me soon after. One week I did try to go back but I could not find the pit. Then it was forgotten. Not today! It didn’t take long, I could see it laying there even before I climbed down. This thing was way too far gone to be made functional again but I didn’t plan on testing any circuits so I didn’t mind. I just wanted to do a cosmetic restoration so I could admire it.
I should have taken some more photos while I worked but here is a quick run down. This thing was literally bloated like a dead body, the case was bent from the inside out like an overstuffed sausage. I wasn’t clear how this could happen but only one way to find out – crack it open. I found 4 screws (hidden inside rubber feet) on the bottom and quickly extracted one but the others either had stripped heads (all were rusted badly) or if they turned, they just spun forever. The angle grinder took care of that and then I was inside.
The case was STUFFED with some ratio of dirt and coal dust. I guess it swelled with moisture. This thing has sat outside for 20 years! If I had looked for it a week ago it would have been hidden under snow. The faceplate was attached to the circuit board via a single screw at the bottom (which of course was rusted and stripped). The top was secured by the soldered connections from the three binding posts. Again, the angle grinder jumped into action removing the head from that rusty screw and simply cutting the soldered connections.
The switches were only held in by the face plate so those tumbled out along with about 6oz of more black filth. The switches were inside metal housings which were so rusted many disintegrated. For those that did not, I removed them like peapods and tossed into the garbage.
Everything then went into the sink for a thorough bath. The switches have small metal contacts that are about the size and shape of staples in their bottoms. This is what bridges the connections on the circuit board. Without the switch housings I was worried they might not sit flat on the board so I yanked them out with a needlenose pliers.
After being dried I started to look at reassembly. First I cut a piece of cardboard to go in the bottom of the case to give the circuit board something compressible to bite into when it was secured with new screws. The old screws threaded into standoffs on the circuit board – those got chopped off with the grinder. I decided I could just use nuts in their place. But the bigger problem was the faceplate. With the soldered connections cut I had nothing to hold it on besides one screw at the bottom (which would also have to be replaced). I decided the only solution would be to drill a hole through the faceplate and the circuit board.
Here is is partially reassembled. You can see the cardboard peeking out (I notched out the corners for the hardware). I didn’t love the idea of the nuts on the faceplate but I was just about out of options. This all tightened down nicely but the hard part was next. Each switch has to be perched on it’s contacts then the faceplate carefully lowered down onto the 28 switches and the 2 screws.
…and of course, somehow, I left one of the switches on my desk at work. I’ll grab it Monday. All in all it came out pretty good! I didn’t figure the switches would ‘flip’ very well without their housings but they actually do! I used 1″ screws to hold the faceplate on after taking as man measurements as I could and that worked out well with just a minimal amount protruding beyond the nut (used 3/4″ on the inside). Of course I have no way to put a screwdriver on the head of these two screws but the heads bit into the cardboard really well and held on while I tightened the nuts.
On the way out I just cycled around very slowly. I made my way over toward ovens and saw a glint of something in the wreckage of battery #2. I was sure it was an illusion but it was not!
I really cannot figure where these came from, or what door on the coal bunker would have had emergency exits. I can only think that these were just stored in the coal bunker somewhere, to be used elsewhere in the plant and they got tossed out into the wild? Either way I took them home, I have a nice pile of ‘generic’ signs like this. What you see above are the cleaned up versions – they were quite dirty.
All in all a very productive Saturday with great weather. Despite my worries I saw no one – even on a nice day no one was interested. And that is just fine with me.