The continuing saga of DECO's transformer

DECO attempted to install a pair of "baby" transformers to replace the replacement of the one that blew up back in August. They were incompatible, or something, and the whole "do-we-or-don't-we" installation debate provoked some great fights on the other side of the house.

Then they got another little transformer that would be compatible, only it's not. Or something.

Then yesterday, someone sent three DECO operators here to my home station because they were going to shut down house service and fix all the cascading problems that transformer caused. Now, this would have been a bloody inconvenience to me, shutting down power to my office on the very day I process payroll, but it didn't matter 'cause it didn't happen.

Mind, the operators found out it was a no-go after they'd all been pulled off other jobs and assembled here, and after I'd grabbed two of our own operators to assist in the matter. It's actually going to happen today.

Or maybe not. It's raining.

It was great to see the Three Amigos (Chirpy, Lou, and Kramer) in one place, though. They're always fun, even if Chirpy was in a kind of a bad mood about the whole mess. Lou told me'n'Gordon about the fun DECO is having at another station. A sixty-year-old regulator needs to be replaced, and the replacement parts they found are even more ancient-- more like eighty years.

It's cool working on a system with such history. I feel bad every time an old Westinghouse gets scrapped. Gordon says that DECO maintained things so well for so long that the antique equipment functioned great for decades, but that after Maintenance's budget was cut, things have kind of gone to hell (and didn't ITC find that out when they picked up the transmission system!). Now DECO (and ITC to a lesser extent) are having the old stuff fail on them, replacement parts are hard to find and may be older than the pieces what dun gone bad, and the other option is installing new stuff entirely.

ITC likes that latter option. They change out breakers and reactors, and just scrap the old stuff instead of using it for spare parts in case the ones that haven't been changed out yet go bad. This is perhaps not the best approach... they scrapped three reactors at Rouge earlier this year, and now one of the matching reactors at Rouge's sister plant is making funny noises. It'd be nice if they could fix the problem using the discarded bits from Rouge, but those are kind of gone (ok, completely gone).

Gordon's assessment of the squeaky reactors: "Too bad. It's broke."