Hi Roy
On (09 Sep 96) Roy J. Tellason wrote to BILL BAUER...
 RJ> > What the heck is a "delco light plant"?
 RJ> I wonder where they came up with the 32 volt figure?  And where did you
 RJ> find light bulbs and such to work with that?
Lamp bulbs historically, were a commodity much traded internationally- 
ermany
Holland and Britain for example sent resp Siemens, Phillips, Osram etc globes
and many of these were sold to the final user, with local eg US brand names.
Lamps thus had to meet the needs of many eccentric voltage ratings depending
on where purchased. 32v was a popular value in UK and AUS and as you say, on
a NY City subway. It was the lighting voltage on Sydney NSW city trains.
The only place I remember
 RJ> ever seeing light bulbs which would run on that (and they may have 
been_
 RJ> 32 volt,  but it's been so long I'm not sure) was on real old subway 
ars
 RJ> in the New York City subway system.  I used to ride the old Third Avenue
 RJ> El,  when it was still functional.
A big exporter of subway train hardware [motors, compressors, generators,
collectors, switchgear, cab controls] was Metropolitan Vickers of Manchester
England. They supplied elec trains in NSW and maybe? New York too.
                                                                        
 RJ> Come to think of it,  _those_ bulbs would only come on when the 
particular
 RJ> car you were in lost connection with the power and ran off battery 
power, 
 RJ> I wonder what sort of maintenance they used to have to do on the 
batteries
 RJ> on those cars?  I never heard anything about that,  and my father worked
 RJ> for the system for a number of years.
The batteries provided to Sydney trains were NIFE alkaline Nickel- Iron type,
very similar to those made by Edison. Virtually everlasting, the only
maintenance was water addition to the cells. Built in 1924 these were
[unecessarily] replaced in 1946 with lead- acid types due to an overpurchase
of starter batteries for army tanks which were built in the same train
workshops in WW2. The acid batteries were an unfortunate choice and we were
stuck with that ill advised decision. I was a train maintenance electrician.
The loss of power from the 1500v dc source, would result in the emergency
lighting contactor holding battery supply onto selected car lights
until supply restarted the lighting motor- generator.
Not quite a HOMEPOWER topic, except that I used scrap subway car flexible
conductor, to wire our house for 12v operation during two years of Sydney
power cuts. Necessary central station plant had been torpedoed en route
from UK during the war so NSW was hard pressed to maintain utility supplies.
My battery was one of the scrapped NIFE batteries and the charger was a 
UNGAR
bulb type half wave rectifier driven both on the heater and plate circuits,
with war surplus 500 cycle aircraft transformers.
My wife's sewing machine was driven by a 28v/ 1200v war surplus genemotor to
which I fitted a pulley. I think that genemotor was from an IFF set
[Identification Friend or Foe]. Here in NSW, the end of the Cold War is 
eeing
a lot of Military hardware turn up for sale. Trader Bob in Goulburn NSW is
selling sono- buoys and packing cases etc from surface> air missiles. Nice
waterproof ply. He gave me gratis, two NICAD wet cells so now my garden shed
runs at 15 volts instead of 12 volts!  Cheers..ALEC
... ........BUNDANOON, on a dirt track leading to the Info Superhighway
--- PPoint 1.92
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