Today's photo shows the?Northern Electric's East Nicolaus substation. This concrete building was completed in 1908. In the photo there are no lines connected to the insulator banks, plus there is what looks like construction debris all over the place. This was probably taken sometime in 1908, though it was published in the Electric Railway Journal in 1909. Also note the unloading dock between the track and the building.
Originally this substation had two 400 KW 600 volt Westinghouse generators, each driven?by 3-phase 2200 volt induction motors. Control panels were by General Electric. In the distance you can see two cottages built in the Northern Electric style, possibly for the employees who monitored the equipment. All north end substations were converted to automatic operation by 1929.
