Here's a 24 pole 300HP pump I worked on a few
years decades ago, it's lifting water out of the Sacramento River into an irrigation ditch.
300HP, 407A 250RPM, so fairly high slip too.
Here she is in all of her glory...
The device on the right with the fan in front of it was the "one Armed Bandit" starter for it, called a "Manual Compensator" which, if you have never seen one, is like an Autotransformer starter, except without contactors. It has a 3 position manually operated switch with a big handle on the side, kind of like a slot machine. You push the handle forward to Start through the transformer, then after the motor winds up and 'sounds about right", you pull the handle back through the Off position and into Run, which puts it Across the Line.
The two red things on the front are the "Dash Pot" overload relays. The ammeter on the front was DIRECT READING, no CTs!
This is the pump station, there were 4 of these inside, but only 3 still in service. We were replacing the Manual Compensators with solid state soft starters. One of my all time favorite projects, it was like working in a museum of our industry. The gear was built in 1908.
