Power Director 12 Key

[Diante Scharsch]

A schematic panel, resembling an Olympic-sized interlocking-tower model board, stretches across three walls, showing 19 substations, high-voltage distribution lines, and the location and energized status of all wired tracks.

This was the last-built of four PDOs, joining centers in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Together, they supervised power distribution to overhead catenary along 674 route-miles and 2,191 track-miles.

After tackling limited early projects, including the 1910 New York Penn Station 600-volt D.C. third-rail electrification, PRR started its sprawling mainline electrification program in 1915 with MU commuter cars on the 20-mile Philadelphia-Paoli, Pa., route. Eliminating steam locomotives, making operations faster and more efficient, and reducing dependence on coal, the system grew to enable the running of intercity freight and high-speed passenger trains.

PRR electrified from New York to Philadelphia in 1933, Philadelphia to Washington in 1935, and Philadelphia to Harrisburg, along with several freight-bypass main lines, in 1938. The company repeatedly studied extending the wires to Pittsburgh, but the idea died under the dual impact of postwar inflation and the emerging use of diesel road locomotives. Diesels offered the benefits of electrification without the costly capital investment needed to build power plants, transmission lines, and catenary.

In full operation, the Harrisburg PDO was staffed around the clock by two full-time power directors. They oversaw 250 mainline route-miles (all two, three, or four tracks), plus many more yard tracks:

Two events more than 30 years apart made the PDO available. In 1982, Conrail ended electrified freight operations and scrapped its remaining E44, E33, and GG1 locomotives, rerouting all of its east-west traffic behind diesels to parallel former Reading, Lehigh Valley, and Jersey Central lines. Only the Philadelphia-Harrisburg passenger main line remained energized, and by this time it was operated by Amtrak.

Then in 2013, Amtrak consolidated dispatching, interlocking-plant, and overhead-power distribution at its Centralized Electrification and Traffic Control office in Wilmington, Del. On Feb. 2 of that year, Jim Anderson, an Amtrak power director at Harrisburg, handed off control to the Wilmington CETC at 7 a.m. and retired. As he did so, he logged off the computers that had been installed in the early 2000s, turned the power off, signed a logbook, and handed it to his trainee, who took it to the CETC office. The chapter still has the analog clock reading 7:00 and 23 seconds, showing the precise moment that the PDO closed.

Among the early groups to tour the PDO are the Lexington Group for Transportation History; railroaders from Amtrak, Norfolk Southern, Reading & Northern and SMS Lines; and Telephone Collectors International (much of the back-end equipment is identical to telephone switching gear).

What an impressive restoration project. The Power Director was a seldom recognized element of the system, whose functions were myriad and essential on the heavily trafficked Eastern Region. Much recognition is due to the NRHS members responsible for this herculean task. Thank-you, indeed!

Policing in the US can serve as a sort of Rorschach test: Are the cops a corrective force necessary to combat criminals? Or a hotbed of corruption whose unchecked authority poses a threat to disadvantaged communities? Power, the new documentary by director Yance Ford, addresses these tough questions while carefully considering how policing as we know it came to be.

In Power, Ford examines the history of American policing in order to see what its future may hold. The slave patrols created in the 1700s to track down enslaved persons; the often violent police suppression of the Civil Rights movement; and more recent wrongful deaths rhyme in ways that are difficult to ignore within a deeply entrenched framework of violent racial inequity. Yet in many communities throughout the country, the police are seen as a necessary bulwark against the threat of crime and disorder. The documentary allows this contradiction to drive the narrative forward, with insights from scholars and critics of the police alongside those of law enforcement officers and civilians whose lives have been negatively affected by policing.

There are certain moments in Power when archival footage of police brutality is obscured in some way. How did you decide which clips would be shown in their entirety or not?

I think in a perfect world, the film would move through our culture and have people begin to articulate for themselves: What is the demand I am going to make of policing? There frankly have been people who have been making demands of American policing for years and years, and their voices have fallen on deaf ears. If American policing is the manifestation of state power, as I believe it is, [then] I think that the state has to be accountable to the people.

Hurricane City Power is a city-owned power provider and is governed by the City Council. Our team of thirteen full-time department employees and four shared city employees strive to provide the City of Hurricane with reliable and economical power for the community's needs.

Hurricane City Power Department has earned a Reliable Public Power Provider (RP3) designation from the American Public Power Association for providing reliable and safe electric service. The RP3 designation recognizes public power utilities that demonstrate proficiency in four key disciplines: reliability, safety, workforce development, and system improvement. Criteria within each category are based on sound business practices and represent a utility-wide commitment to safe and reliable delivery of electricity.

The RP3 designation now lasts for three years. Hurricane City Power Department is one of 3 utilities statewide and of 47 utilities nationwide that earned the Gold Level designation this year. In total, 274 of the more than 2,000 public power utilities nationwide hold the RP3 designation. Hurricane City Power Department's RP3 application was scored at 87%.

We're honored to receive the RP3 designation. The Power Department strives to provide safe, reliable energy to our customers. This RP3 Gold designation illustrates that the Power Department is on the right track. RP3 is a registered service mark of APPA.

During a power outage, citizens can call the main office phone number listed above to leave a message. However, management and crews will be very busy determining the cause and extent of the outage and trying to restore service as quickly as possible. The Power Department will return your call as soon as possible but there may be some delay.

Bayona directed the first two episodes of the show, setting up the journey of a number of new individuals from Middle Earth, and the series takes place thousands of years before the events depicted in The Hobbit.

Above the Line spoke with Bayona a few months back over Zoom for this interview, in which he discussed his approach to The Rings of Power and working with its showrunners to find the ensemble cast.

Bayona: We talked about the whole arc of the show. We knew what the goal was, and then we went through the specifics of the first season. We loved the idea behind it, and then I read the first two episodes and then read all the episodes right after that, but the first impression was with the first two episodes, and I really enjoyed them. I thought they were great, and I really liked the idea.

We started very quickly to design the show because we had to recreate from scratch the Seven Kingdoms for only the first two episodes. I was only involved with the first two episodes, but I had to look, with the showrunners, for the whole cast and create the designs for the Seven Kingdoms.

ATL: And were you heavily involved with casting all the actors, most of whom are fresh faces? How long did that process take, and did you try to cast a lot of folks from New Zealand since they were already down there?

Bayona: Because I was only responsible for the first two episodes, it was more about the directors [who] came after me [and] that they were allowed to get into editorial and see the scenes that I was shooting. They were allowed to be on set. We sat down and we talked about the story together. It was more about opening the gates to them so they were able to see what I was doing, not me going to see them. [But] it was a great collaboration. They were always allowed to [be a part of] the conversation because they were the ones [who] were going to be following the story.

ATL: But if, say, Galadriel has certain scenes in the first episode, did you do everything with her first in some kind of order and then focus on the next character? They all have their own separate journeys over the first two episodes, at least, so did you try to stick with one actor or character at a time?

Bayona: Yeah, it was great because the last time I [worked] in Spanish was 15 years ago. It was great to be back shooting in my [native] language with a cast of newcomers from Chile and Uruguay. It was a great feeling to be back on set, talking my own language.

Keesler Energy Manager Billy Stevenson and Reggie Lechner, Keesler energy management control systems operator, analyze base power consumption in 2014. Following the award of an Energy Savings Performance contract in 2019, the Mississippi base has now implemented four energy conservation measures. Thanks to the conservation upgrades, the base expects an annual savings of 113,840 million British Thermal Units, a 15.8 percent reduction in energy consumption and $3.4 million in water savings. (U.S. Air Force photo by Kemberly Groue)

Rob Bonnet talks to fourth generation book maker Paddy Power, who is director of communications for the family firm. Paddy Power PLC is a company on the up, having led the way in developing the market for betting online and on mobile devices.

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