Ignoramus6286 wrote:
Rescued from Illinois Train Museum today.

http://igor.chudov.com/tmp/MuseumPurchases/


Humpf! Now, I did see a big compressor, once. It was an
Ingersoll-Rand, single cylinder, horizontal, run by a 300 Hp
salient-pole synchronous motor. They used the synchronous motor
to adjust power factor for the whole plant. (aside: Putting a
synchronous motor on line and overexciting the rotor winding
causes it to draw a leading power factor from the mains, just
like a huge capacitor bank. They hook a phase angle meter to a
field current controller and it keeps the plant at near-perfect
power factor. This was called a synchronous condenser back in
the old days.)

There were actually two of these in a room in the Emerson
Electric defense plant built in 1951 or so.

Jon