Switchboard

A marble switchboard stands in what was once the control room of Shimizusawa Thermal Power Plant. The top panel still carries its original gauges and dials, labels worn but readable, brass switches still resting in their last positions. The marble has darkened in patches where dust and moisture have done their work, but the slabs are intact, still bolted to the same steel frame they were fitted to in 1926. The mounting holes for cables that have since been cut are visible at the back. There's a layer of grit on the floor in front of it. Nobody has worked here in a long time.

Switchboards like this one were standard in early-twentieth-century power plants. Marble was the obvious choice. It was non-conductive, durable, and easy to slot copper bus-bars into the back of. The Shimizusawa board has outlived the equipment it was built to control. The plant ran on its current for sixty-four years before going quiet in 1990. Most boards of this era have been pulled and broken up so the marble can be sold off as benchtops or floor tile. This one is still in place. Whether that's because nobody got around to it, or because someone decided not to, isn't recorded.