Revisiting Port Richmond

Sunday morning was initially a struggle. I had to get up well before dawn at 4:15am to drive to Falls Church and then to DC where 5 of us were meeting to drive up to Philadelphia, but once in the car I was wide awake. Which was just as well really. We were going back to Port Richmond, an abandoned power station which I'd last visited a couple of years before but had desperately wanted to see again. We all chatted on the drive up and the 3 hours traveling seemed no more than an hour. Here's an excellent bird's eye view.

We grabbed our gear and headed inside.

We wasted no time in setting up and swiftly agreed to meet up in 2 hours time, then went our separate ways, none of us talking as we looked about in awe. This place really has to be seen to fully appreciate its enormity and presence. Although it's been closed since 1985 it isn't difficult to look around and imagine the turbines humming and workers attending to them.

The wonderful control room. I didn't get too many good shots of this last time so patiently set my tripod up and took my time as who knows if we'll ever get back inside here again.

I took so many shots here and even though it had been trashed considerably more since I'd last been, I still felt the magic. My only regret was that I'd wanted to bring a box of donuts as a prop as this room with its big curving control desk reminded me so much of Homer at work in The Simpsons.

We eventually met up over 2 hours later but nobody was ready to leave so it was another hour before we even thought about finishing up. The lighting was wonderful in the turbine room with sunbursts shooting through the holes in the roof and lighting up the machinery. Lewis and I took some panoramic shots with our iPhones and then we did a group shot.

 Once group shots were taken it was time to leave. We left by a window and Huggy had the idea of photography us all leaving so I strung them together in a short video here.
We were amazed at how long we'd been inside and so of course were all starving and ready for food and beer after our hard work. We drove through some dodgy suburbs before settling on a small Indian food place. I have to call it that since it was really a take out place with a couple of tables. We pushed these together and the owner was nice enough to let us get some beer from across the road and drink it there. Which was just as well since we waited like forever for our food. Which wasn't particularly wonderful but it filled our bellies.

It actually wasn't too bad but we had beer and good company and that made it all so much better.We spent the rest of the afternoon scouting around the outside of the city, stopping at a few places but unable to gain entry. The one place we knew would be open was The Devine Lorraine, a large hotel I've visited previously, but today there were teenagers spraying paint outside and up on the roof so we left well alone. We were content to start driving back home and I got back to Meadow House well before midnight.
I found this wonderful article comparing Battersea Power Station in London with Port Richmond; it was only written last December so is completely valid.
 Adding this at the bottom, Huggy found a YouTube video of an urbexer who combined his own video with the Transformers 2 movie which was being filmed at Richmond the first time we visited..
Here's the link.

Early Morning Sun at Meadow House

I was awoken by my murder of crows this morning at just before 7am. These birds are so clever, they now know that I throw out seed every Saturday morning so now demand it. They never do this on weekdays or Sundays only Saturdays and this morning the collective of usually 8 was now 10. They'd brought friends. I got up and went out scattering seed everywhere, gave Kota his breakfast and then settled back in bed again with a cup of tea and my book. I kept looking out of the window at my black buddies who were now cawing with delight. The sun had just risen and it was going to be a beautiful morning. The light outside was wonderful so I hopped out of bed again, grabbed my camera and went out with Kota trotting close behind.
The buds were bursting out from their branches and flowers were popping up through the damp soil. Cobwebs glinted with white jewels and every blade of grass had a tiny crystal of dew at its tip.

Kota and I walked about a mile through the fields. With me laying down to get a lot of my shots and with Kota's furry legs we were both pretty wet by the time we got to the fish pond. I noticed somebody had put some feathers and stones on the bench. I had no idea if it was an Indian symbol or a child's imagination but it was cool so I just took and photo and left it alone, making sure Kota didn't disturb it either.
We both trudged back up the hill to the house and went about getting cleaned up. Me to the bathroom and Kota to the rug in front of the fire. What a lovely start to the weekend.

A Tour around PSI

On Friday, Mike and I drove up to Maryland to PSI, a company who makes all of our boxes. We're wanting some more custom boxes made but are unsure of what size so we were invited up to their plant where they could help us with our needs and show us how things are done.

 We started by looking at a few of their sample boxes to see how they folded and the print methods. Once we had some ideas we went to the design shop where their team helped us to decide on 3 sizes which they would make while we were having our tour.

I spotted this up on a shelf, a little Geico gimmick that they'd replicated with corrugated card.
Then at last it was off into the factory, I love seeing how things are made. The plant holds over 4.5 million square feet of cardboard, has 18 loading bays and can turn around jobs in 24 hours. The first thing Andy, the Sales Manager, told us was how green the plant is. All the solvents are cleaned off, filtered and the waste barely fills a trash bag at the end of the week.

A big cyclone above the roof sucks the scrap from production then feeds this machinery which chops it up, compacts it and then bales it. All left over cardboard goes in here and the bales are sold to China who themselves make boxes from them.

 The top image is a rack of templates for cutting different style boxes and immediately above are clients' print plates. I couldn't see Emblemax's.

 Of course a PSI stamp goes on every box.

This machine is PSI's new baby. It cost about  $3.5 million and can create 13-33 hundred boxes an hour. It can cut the boxes and print them.

This beast may be the only one of its kind on the east coast. It makes the big boxes,eg. for electrical appliances like fridges or ovens. It only needs a number punched in and then can be left to make and print the boxes. There is no waste from this machine. Apparently most box making machines are Italian or German.

 This machine is making partitions. There's also a machine which only scours lines on boxes or partitions for easier folding.

 Here's a machine in action.

 Andy explaining a  part of production. This guy knew his stuff and held our attention the whole time.

The die cutting machines here come apart and can be mixed and matched as they each perform a different task.

Part of their huge storage facility.

This is a lazy susan style stapling machine. It's punching huge staples to assemble these reels which may go on to hold up to $20,000 of gold connectors.

 PSI don't only make boxes. They provide all the packaging materials and once had a 2 year contract to supply foam for packing missiles being sent to Iraq. Even their scrap foam is not wasted. This is solidified by a machine here and then goes off to be made into composite decking. PSI also supply cut glass to many hardware stores.

Finished boxes are sent down their huge roller system to their loading docks. All too soon our tour was finished and we headed back to the design room. It had certainly been an impressive introduction to the box industry and I was also impressed at how clean and safety conscious the plant was. And Andy even encouraged me to take photos but of course I ensured no client names were revealed in my images.

We got back and found a stack of boxes ready for us, perfectly made and certainly ideal for what we had in mind. Now we had seen first hand how these were printed in the plant, I could go back to my desk and start thinking about artwork. This had been an enjoyable and educational morning. Thank you Packaging Services Inc.
http://www.psimd.com/http://www.psimd.com/