Abandoned Century Old Power Plant - Found Control Rooms!

[Music] in today's episode we're exploring the abandoned gold street station in baltimore maryland the power plant consists of three distinct sections constructed between 1905 and 1950 at one point this facility was considered state of the art attracting engineers from across the world to come and observe today however it's an ancient relic that allows us to get a glimpse of some of the earliest large-scale generating technology currently demolition of the plant is underway but we managed to take a look inside before it began join us as we explore [Music] [Music] thanks to harry's for sponsoring this portion of today's video harry's was created because the founders were tired of overpaying for over designed razors they keep it very simple and manufacture their own extremely high quality blades that do a fantastic job at cutting hair and not your face their online store offers a no-frills experience in getting what you need at a price you want for the holidays harry's is offering gift sets that include all of the grooming essentials in a great package these are perfect gifts for anyone that shaves and they have a handful of different sets that include a variation of products they even have gift sets that include shampoo and body wash the gift set that they sent me includes their super smooth shave gel their truman handle two blade cartridges and travel cover you don't need to spend a lot to get a good razor the razor is only nine dollars and the blades start at only two dollars a piece but by using our link you can get a trial set for just three dollars visit harrys.com proper people to get your trial and browse the holiday gift sets we just got into this abandoned coal fire generating station well it was converted to gas by the time it closed but yeah as we were getting our cameras out we heard some noises inside so hopefully there's not scrappers in here or anything like that so we're in the boiler house right now it's really not dusty in here no this is the base for one of the turbines that's like a power tool fucking scrappers i think it's a scrapper a worker probably scrapper someday yeah a lot of this pipe's already asbestos-free so i'm sure there's some left probably in the older sections so there's the newer unit it's still close together let's see if we can get a visual what was in here first let's go up these stairs he's down there somewhere he's down there you see no but i hear it coming from over there let's go up the stairs those turbines look really nice from the 1920s it could have just been the wind and we're just making ourselves paranoid could have been the noises i heard when we were putting together a camera sounded like pipes being dragged oh there's someone here oh it doesn't make that it's noise a low level down or two underneath the turbines let's walk down here hey we're just taking pictures not gonna be no trouble for you all right we're up here we're we're just taking pictures we're not going to be no trouble for you all right all right uh just personal just for fun personal yeah yeah i know a lot of people in here okay it's too echo here's the boiler house they built walls around this turbine after they put walls around the turbine after i stopped using it you'll be able to get such a nice shot of both units yeah this section of the plant is the boiler house and it's where coal was burned to create steam for the turbines pretty tall boiler house probably should put our respirators on in here or we could just like be in here for two minutes until yeah just be quick okay it's so dreadfully hot that i don't really want to wear one it's a ton of blueprints here yeah we're trying to be quick here because there is asbestos around these are schematics from 1958 some even older here's one of the boiler control panels so these panels look like they were installed in the late 40s early 50s probably updated from the original ones sounds like there's someone above us too these over here look older these gauges look much older these are really old daily meters oh wow yeah that's it no but look at that bailey boiler meter i love how on the tips of these gauges it's kind of like a spade rather than just a basic needle let's go up a floor i've seen this exact sign in quite a few power plants oh yeah it's for an ashtray i guess it's an asbestos free tunnel asbestos tunnel it looks like they were doing some abatement yeah they just gave up they're gonna have to do more though before they demolish it though should we go on the crane yeah it could be a nice view from here [Applause] this building is really cool though it really shows its age it feels ancient in here yeah they did replace the ceiling there's some nice trim around the windows there especially this edge you could see where the original ceiling was cut and they applied or they covered it with the sheet metal you can see the original concrete rebar sticking out there these are jammed up unfortunately you need to press the button oh yeah there you go this was like the peak of technology in the 1920s these are some old control panels for sure those generators look so much bigger as soon as you get down to their level it's a good like 15 feet tall i'd say [Music] in the turbine hall there remains two massive steam turbo generators from 1927. these units manufactured by general electric were capable of producing 35 megawatts each today that's a paltry sum for a steam turbine but at the time these were some of the most powerful units in the world their positioning in the center of this cavernous well-lit room lets you know that these were the most important machines in the building the beating hearts of the plant sending electricity coursing through baltimore's grid these controls they just directly connect all the way down to the pipes would have been a nice ge plaque right in that circle those are always the first to go even these um gauges that are supposed to be here are gone yeah i think on the other unit they're still there still really impressive machine to stand in front of you always have nice details on the handrails too and these old plants [Applause] there's probably a lot of copper in this thing i think this is all just wound up copper that's that's probably easier to get at on that control panel though which is why the scrapper is over there [Music] [Music] [Music] these gauges in the middle here look really old yeah they move too the way the thing bob's around yeah it's a fluid gauge right must be yeah i like the little lights up top that like fixture on the wall looks really nice too there's only two of them left here's the other unit it's a bit harder to get a nice shot of this one though because of the wall they put on the other side of course it was mint green at some point yeah still got most of the casing on this generator yeah that definitely was not the original equipment that was there but they just bolted that on there for some reason yeah they just built a wall when they decommission this that's so funny the end of these generators is also like a face to me with the two holes there yeah a lot of the ones from the 20s have that yeah i really wish they didn't build this watch like yeah this doesn't exist anymore better than tearing the turbine out yeah that costs more money though not really i think you make money back because you can sell it inside yeah maybe it was broken so it looks like they just used this old half as their offices for this last unit when that was still active i think this one was active until 2018 yeah maybe even 2019. wow yeah it was um shut down for a few years uh and then they reopened it this feels like a pretty modern plant yeah this must have been like 70s 80s no older than that older than that yeah 50s i think 50s because the 50s is when they really stopped getting ornate i guess they gave it a new paint job and yeah the next unit was installed in 1952 and added 100 megawatts to the plant's generating capacity this section of the plant is essentially a metal box carrying over none of the aesthetics of the older turbine hall in the early 1950s plants were rapidly transitioning towards becoming much more utilitarian structures but even for its time this was a rather bland expansion that being said it's still impressive to see this massive piece of machinery up close this has some text on here constellation power source generation yeah i think that was the company that reactivated just this one unit for a few years these gauges aren't like a swivel yeah the control panel over here is all computerized now with a bunch of blanks i love this big thing to control the valve yeah that's beefy is that a control room i see yeah there is a control room over there it looks like holy shit that's a lot of water it's all empty though [Music] damn that's the back of the control panel i don't think we can get into the control room from here though look there's blanks all over here for real yeah oh wow yeah this would have all been control panels this goes in and there probably wasn't like a room around it this was probably built later to surround this panel yeah you could see they had a lot of computers in here a lot of blanks i like when they i don't know when they put the computers in as long as they don't remove they remove the controls looks like they removed a lot i see a lot of blank panels it's still cool though those almost look like they're lit with our lights oh look christmas lights that is like the most surefire spot in proper people bingo it might as well be the free space [Music] [Music] so [Music] this place really feels massive when you stand right here and look up on top where that yellow railing is is the newer turbine that we were just looking at i love the iron work with all the rivets really nice concrete will never look as good unfortunately that side of this condenser was taken off once it was decommissioned a while ago this looks cool oh it's a bunch of tanks staggered in size [Applause] here's some smaller pumps after finishing in this section of the plant we still had one more building to see the original 1905 switch house this building was responsible for connecting the plant to the grid and managing how the generated power was distributed these old switch houses often have very interesting control rooms so we were excited to get inside they would have had all transformers in this slot probably each of these slots [Music] yeah this looks extremely old should we go up yeah the railings are pretty industrial but they do have a few nice little flourishes to them here's some transformers not the michael bacon or the cartoon account oh yeah they're old looking ones too probably full of pcbs and other oils oh yeah an old westinghouse labels on it grid oil circuit breaker that means it's filled with the nasty stuff these are nice satisfying switches more the same got to keep going up switch house control rooms are almost always at the very top floor this floor is different oh wow these are manual switches this tells you like which um line you were cutting with each of these switches these are probably like big factories that had their own dedicated wine maybe oh and before it says something street 35th street so probably all different substations and whatnot check out the conduit coming through the ceiling in this semi-circle oh yeah i just noticed that it's probably control board up there yeah that follows the same path you can see how it would have got routed to all the different switches down here and look at this top for a light fixture there yeah they're like brass the lamp is still there it probably would have been really nice yeah probably had like a glass cover over it that would have been like frosted or something yeah but they just replaced them with the bare industrial bulbs it says keep off painted lines and you can kind of see these faint lines on the floor around the switches it's probably too dangerous to get any closer than that because there could be an arc flash or something i don't know this should be the control room it goes up another level above this too there's something i don't know if this is the control room but this looks like the subfloor for the control room just more routing for it yeah i want to go in it though some boxes yeah it's all pulled out it's probably for managing the routing of the wires these huge junction boxes there's the battery controls here these motors on the ground here look pretty interesting oh yeah so many exposed components you really don't see that on your machinery this says retired in place may 2nd 1986. so these have been just used for a long time yeah this has the same date on it 86. i wonder how long they use this elevator to must be pretty rickety yeah all right oh yeah this is control we've got a control panel oh yeah nice man there's a lot of blanks though wow there really are it's still pretty cool at least there's some sections that are mostly intact you can kind of use your imagination for the rest [Music] [Music] so they never make curved control panels anymore there's just no reason to i guess well there was a reason for them to do it originally to make it look nice also to be able to sit in the middle and see everything within your tree but now you can see everything on a computer screen yeah these gauges are so nice and you can see the uh mid-century ones right next to it nowhere near as cool is yeah i guess it just goes in like this so you don't hit it accidentally i actually don't know but it had a lot so to turn it you had to like yeah [Music] there would have been like twice as many gauges and dials as there are now this whole center area these are the old slate kind of yeah they would have been black originally you could see it peeling over behind the yeah they painted it grayish teal or whatever it is every power plant from this era every old one that we've done seems to have these same desks it's just missing that one style of metal chair that every power plant has to swirl the knobs on it oh yeah let's put it back together it's all different kinds [Applause] i'll just turn it too [Applause] there you go today demolition is underway at gold street station with plans in place to redevelop the property there aren't that many examples of power plants of this age still in existence but unfortunately they often fly under the radar when it comes to historic preservation since so many people are unaware of what lies within although gould street station was not the most ornate power plant we've explored it will definitely be missed when it's [Music] gone [Music] you

Channel: The Proper People

Views: 376,636

Keywords: abandoned, urban, exploration, urbex, exploring, haunted, proper, people, theproperpeople, abandoned places, power plant, power station, gould street station, baltimore, steam turbine, control room, engineering, technology

Id: Pzj0zv4zhX8

Length: 32min 12sec (1932 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020