For the past 15 years or so, the NYCTA (the folks running the run-down subway here in New York City) has been replacing its incandecent platform lighting with modern fluorecent fixtures.

In the old days, they would install the new fixtures and either leave the incandecent bulbs burning until they finally died or disconnect those circuits from the panels.

The lampholders were left in place with their blackened bulbs. Some would eventually get smashed by people throwing rocks at them.

Then the TA started removing the bulbs and inserting what looked like CORKS into the lampholders.

I think this was done in order to prevent the ceiling painters from getting shocked from a potential live lampholder with no bulb (or a broken stump). The lampholder with its cork and everything would get painted right over.

Now they get fancy and remove the fixture, cap off the brittle wires and put a blank plate over the ceiling box. This gets painted over next time the ceiling gets painted. That's how I got one of these fixtures (I asked the guy taking them down if I could have one) [Linked Image]

For a truly invisible job, they've taken to removing the lampholders and FILLING IN THE BOX WITH CONCRETE!!!

I don't know if they leave the old wires in there or what because sometimes when I go to a station where the long-defunct incanecent fixtures have been taken down, you see squares where the box was filled in, smoothed out and painted over.

Over time these will blend in to the rest of the soot-covered surface.

There have been times when (and the underground station in my neighborhood is a prime example) where existing conduit has bee re-used.

In my case, some of the old incandesent fixtures were taken down, new wire was fished through, box extenders installed in every-other-box and then the emergency lights (small u-shaped fluorecent boxes) were hooked up to these extenders with a short piece of conduit. The other existing boxes that weren't used were covered with blanking plates.

The subway walls and floors/ceilings are solid masonry, of course....so a lot of add-on newer conduit is surface mounted or suspended by straps from the ceiling.

And then there are the kluges where low voltage wire for communications of some sort or another has been secured with tie wraps to existing pipes (water, electric, gas, who knows).