Well, the smokestacks have all but disappeared from the venerable Cahokia Power Plant, and the future of the building is looking grim. But on a brighter note, years ago a reader generously shared with me a brochure that Union Electric published about the plant, and I present it to you here on the occasion of the probable end of the behemoth presence on the East Side.

Electricity is generated more or less the same way whether it’s with coal, gas, garbage or nuclear fission: intense heat is created in order to boil water until it becomes steam, and that pressurized steam via turbines then causes generators to spin so fast that they generate electricity. Easy!

This diagram does a great job of explaining how the power plant worked. I will leave it up to the book’s explanatory texts at this point, but I do have to say, they picked up the entire railcar to unload it?!

In the future, I’m planning on checking out the hydroelectric dam in Keokuk next year when it gets warmer.