Federal Pacific Electric

 My Dad came back from the great WWII in 1946. He arrived at Alameda Naval Air Station in a C-54.

He was the oldest son and single. The rest of the Family, brothers Frank and John, and sister Anne, by this time ALL married, agreed that he should be the one to take care of his Mother. Reluctantly he agreed but told everyone “The day she dies I’m leaving for California”. On Easter Sunday 1948 my grandmother passed away, Dad was on a train Monday afternoon.

Dad got a job with Federal Pacific Electric Co. shortly after his arrival in California. FPE had a factory and headquarters in Newark, NJ, but Dad began at the plant in Glendale, Ca. He met my mother in 1954, married her in 1955 and continued with FPE, but split time between the facility in Glendale, and South San Francisco. They moved into the house I grew up in in 1960.

With respect to AIR1 & AIR2 FPE had a factory in eastern Tennessee.  I moved that factory 150 miles to the north so it would show up on my first layout, and FPE will be on the AIR2 layout as well.

Dad started with FPE in 1949 and “died at his desk” in 1976. FPE is long gone. After my dad passed away Reliance Electric bought the bankrupt FPE.  If you Google FPE all you’ll find is product liability lawsuits. Apparently their patented, signature circuit Breaker, the “Stab-Lok” along with the Panel, was a fire hazard nightmare. Subsequent tests showed that at least 50% of Stab-lok breakers failed to trip.

 I grew up in a house full of FPE equipment and in spite of the poor safety record we never had a problem.   In 2008 my brother and I gut renovated my Mother’s home, and replaced all the wiring. Some of the short cuts we found were shocking. As a child you never question your Father. Holy Cow!

On AIR1 my model of the FPE plant was initially a very poorly designed switching puzzle that took crews a frustrating five hours to switch. I rebuilt it and while busy, it was a much easier, all trailing-point switch job.

On AIR1 FPE received coiled steel for the metal stampings. Tank cars of paint, since all The breaker bodies were powder coated grey. Tank cars of cutting oil since there was a great deal of machining. 

I supposed that this plant also produced its own insulators so it got sand in hoppers, and a lot of coal for the powerhouse and kilns. There was a receiving dock for packaging. 

There was a warehouse for shipping boxcars of switching equipment and an insulator shipping warehouse.

An overhead crane for loading large electrical equipment on heavy duty flatcars. And finally a gondola or scrap steel, from the stamping plant.

On AIR2 FPE will not be shipping large transformers nor will it be shipping glass insulators. It will concentrate on residential and light commercial circuit breakers and panels, like it did in real life.

I will have to research circuit breakers of the 1950’s. I’m going to ASSume there is a large plastic component to these breakers, as opposed to bakealite, so some provision for plastic injection molding will have to be made. 

On AIR2, FPE will be located somewhere in the industrial area located at the West end of the layout. The building will be against the backdrop, it will be multi-storied, and somewhat more compact than the older plant on AIR1. It will have receiving docks for steel, paint, cutting oil, and plastics raw materials. There will be a shipping dock as well. I also hope to shoe-horn in a spot for scrap steel from the stampings plant.:

After she passed away and while cleaning out my Mother’s house, I found quite a bit of my Dad’s memorabilia from his time at FPE, so this time around there will be better graphics on the FPE signs, call it a silver lining of sorts.

Federal Pacific Electric Company will ship several car loads of switching equipment, supplying the need for circuit breakers and panels during the huge single-family home construction boom in the United States of the 1950’s.