Christopher Tidy wrote:
Hi all,

Just got back from spending a few days on holiday in Berlin. I stayed at
a cheap-but-nice place which used to be a telephone factory (take a look
at www.diefabrik.com if you're thinking of going to Berlin - you guys
would probably like the place). Anyway I digress a little, but the place
was fitted out using many Cold War era lamps, desks and fixtures which I
thought looked really cool.

Then one night I went for a walk and noticed a huge complex of derelict
buildings, probably 50 acres or so. It turned out to be an old East
German railway rolling stock maintenance depot. When the wall came down
they had two depots within a couple of miles of each other, so they
closed one, removed all the gear and abandoned it. Nowadays it has been
pretty comprehensively trashed and, apart from the odd sign warning of
"unfallgefahr", you can wander around the place pretty freely. Some
squatters have even set up an nightclub on the site. Given my love of
old junk and also a fascination for derelict buildings, I couldn't
resist a look. Sadly I didn't have a camera with me, but brought back a
couple of things from among the piles of waste on the site:

http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~cdt22/stuff1.jpg

Obviously there are a pair of Bourdon pressure gauges (apparently these
look pretty weird under an x-ray scanner!) and one of those Cold War era
lamps I was talking about. Unfortunately the lamp glass is broken, but I
thought I'd pick it up anyway and try to find a replacement. It looks
like the glass has been sprayed red on the inside, probably so that it
could be used as some kind of signalling lamp. Has anyone seen a lamp
like this before? It's marked with a logo made from the letters "EOW"
and also carries the letters "Ex" and "Sch", both inside circles. The
whole thing is very heavy and the cage isn't made from wire, it's round
bar! I also need a weird triangular spanner to open the case. That blast
cabinet I was talking to Harold about would be useful too! Here are a
few more pictures:

http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~cdt22/lamp1.jpg
http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~cdt22/lamp2.jpg
http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~cdt22/lamp3.jpg
http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~cdt22/lamp4.jpg

Anyone got any thoughts about where to find a new glass dome, or how to
make one? Interesting challenge...

Sorry for the long post!

Best wishes,

Chris

Do you mean beyond the fact that you see lamps with that general design
anwhere that a heavy-duty, rugged lamp is needed? Caged lamps light
that are everywhere; we have at least four of them lighting up our barn
-- the cage keeps the glass from shattering all over the horses if they
start to act up.

--
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Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com