Thats not weird at all, that's really neat!  I wonder why the variacs come in, maybe because things would dim if your generators slowed down.  Interestingly enough i just had a dream last night after posting.  It must have dug up the dream idea.  However it wasnt about lighting, it was about another hobby of mine, audio!  Now i am currently into vacuum tube very low power audio systems and full range horn speakers (my latest project i cant wait to build once the weather warms up) i also cant wait to be able to grill out under my 35 watt HPS wallpack i put up last summer that had been with my parents house for 18 years. I had bought when 12 and given to my dad to have an electrician put up! It is on its second bulb, the generic that came with it started hang in glow about a year ago so we put a Sylvania Lumalux in it which i love!  then when i bought a place about a year ago and my parents moved also, we took the lamp down and dad gave back to me.  It is quite funny how each manufactures bulb goes through a slightly different colored start sequence at a different timeing rate!  Okays anyways, sorry for the rambling tangent.  So the dream, it involved my old passion of 15 years back at least.  High end car audio.  I walked into a shop that i had first learned of audio...now mind you this place went under about 12 years ago! somehow everythign was covered in dust, but the speakers i had heard, that ignited my love for audio were still there in the demo board!  The owner who was pleasant even though his shop was about to be demolished (weird but a crane with a wrecking ball was outside) told me i could un-install everythign i wanted!  However i opened up some New Old Stock subwoofers to find the packaging moldy and stuck to the cones, everything pretty much deteriorated.  I think this comes from my personal fear that some of the stuff i have stored in my basement and havent opened for years to inspect (vintage nos audio) will end up this way :-( Nonetheless the store didnt quite look normal....all of the walls were mdf...what we buitl speaker boxes with...bare...like when we would build a box fast for a show or  or whatnot and not have time to carpet it......no drywall...very unusual to say the least...and i found a few nice catches and uninstalled them to take.  i have  afeeling reading about one fella on here who said he dreamed of finding NOS lighting at a hardware store for original 1970 prices is what struck this dream off.  LoL.

I love audio too! Looks like many people on here have the same identical hobbies! Regarding the MV lamp at the abandoned store, what kind of fixture was it (cobrahead, yardblaser, wallpack)? When you say "the water was running all around the darn thing", do you men the pole it was on was surrounded by water? Was it submerged? Was rain getting into the fixture?

I actually had another lighting dream I just remembered from last night:
The Westinghouse Bug-A-way bulb in my woodshed gave up the ghost, but was strobing violently (as the broken filament waved back and forth), then went out. The weird part was when my Dad was yelling up at my bedroom window that we had a burned out lightbulb.  SO I change it, but am intending to keep it for my collection, right? The bulb had a hole in the glass, the the top of the bulb (like where  the etch was) had a metal plate behind the glass (heat  shield?) with date codes, etc. on it. But you know how when you wake up from a bad dream, you are thankful whatever happened in the dream didn't actually happen in real life? I Woke up and realized that bulb was still going strong! I even just got up and looked out the window, it's still lit!
In case you winder why I love this particular bulb, it's because I found it at a thrift store in california, and brought it and many other vintage GE bug lights and 100w soft white bulbs back with me, as carry-on luggage!
This bulb has the etch for bug-a-way like the T shaped ones had, but this is an A shape, and doesn't have just the word WESTINGHOUSE  identifying itself, just the encircled underlined W.
here's what the etch looks like:
       W
BUG.A.WAY
  60 WATT
115-125V
  U.S.A.
Any ideas on the date? BTW, this has a blue glass insulator!
I am guessing late 70s-early 80s. But maybe an expert like Dave Silverliner can date it...
My second favorite bulb, first being my 175w MV light (long story there)

Hey ace!  That is neat we have similar hobbies!  That mercury vapor lamp at the abandoned stood is across a bridge and close to the river, and I have to drive an extra block out of my way to be under it, but can see each time I go shopping at the food store.  Since the wife works 3rds and I work 2nds this is always sometime after midnight by before 4am LoL.  Anyways it is a yard lasted style!  I really like the crude was of these style fixtures.  The bulb and fixture alike seem very well aged.  It was not submerged, but the rain was so heavy that it was running down and on the fixture as if you put a wide open garden hose ontop of it!  There are a few other lights of interest to me, one other clear mv on my way to work whose photocell apparently has burnt out as its on 24/7 and is probably half original brightness and super blue/green.  It has the short ballast top style, I like these!  The ones without the cone top like the one down in the flood zone!  Then there's another interesting one right by my house on a neighbors garage directly opposing my beloved 35 watt HPS wall pack on my garage.  He is 86 years old but still does a lot of hardworking, and there was a frosted dimly lit one in there, I often hear it start up when im off and home at dusk it's quite loud. Anyways I came out in the fall to see everything bluish green!  Apparently it either died or he knows they dim with age, the fixture is the same but he climbed up and replaced the bulb with a clear bulb now!  I plan to ask him the story when I see him, but he only comes out in spring to sit on his porch.  For some odd reason she I was redoing he house last year before I moved in all of a sudden both Cobrahead HPS lamps one at each end of my road disappeared from their poles!  I hated it it was pitch black!  Well a month later one brand new one at the highway end was returned and it is working well.  The other guy is still gone!  Why the hell would they do this?  Lastly is a little shop I passed on a highway a few weeks ago, probably 45 min from my house, I was driving with the wife but swear to god I think it was lit by 4 oldschool Low Pressure Sodiums!  I plan to make a dedicated trip down there, maybe I will this weekend actually as I'm off and the wife goes in at 7 pm.  That's be fun.  Oh I almost forgot a VERY interesting clear mv fixture on an abandoned church, I need to get a picture of I can't quite describe it but it has an old clear bulb in it and maybe you guys can identify! 

I had another dream last night, it was that I was trying to make a startup video of my MV light for YouTube user VICNASTY1989, but it looked like a SMBV lamp, and sometimes it buzzed really loud and sometimes it was real quiet. 

Hmmm, that's interesting!  I really want to make a drive up to that old shop I saw on a nearby road coming home from a relatives last week that was lit by what I believe to be 4 SOX lamps!  They would be the only ones I know of anywhere here!  I wanted to stop but the wife was with me.  She works 3rds again this weeks d so I just may make a trip and snap some pictures and learn how to make a gallery on here :-). They looked oblong and pure yellow that's why I think they really were sox!  Oh!  I stopped by that clear mercury vapor lastnight down by the abandoned store!  It has just developed a VERY loud buzz!  I also found that it is a frosted bulb but the frosting is very pale and seems to be missing from the bottom!  At first I thought he bottom of he bulb was missing and had broken away from the water that night back in the fall, it was hard to look closely due to the arc tube but it seemed to be intact and just very very old! 

Thta's cool! Was the lamp a BT shape? If so, it could have been a cleartop lamp you were seeing. Yeah, try to get pix of the SOX lights!

Will do!  I know of two shapes but never knew the names!!  Maybe you can teach me.  This one is the shape with the "little hockey puck" at the top! :-). The other style that I like better, with the dimple at the top that the arc tube is anchored to is my favorite shape!  

The dimple is the ED shape, and the other one is BT  (blown tubular)

Oh neat!  Thanks! Well I haven't made it down to the SOX lamps yet but am off again this weekend and gonna try!  Even if they aren't Sox I will try and take pictures of them.  I don't think I will be able to make it down to them before they start up as the wife goes to work at 7pm.  However I will just make a trip down there again around 8pm in the summer time when it doesn't get dark till 9pm and actually video the group of Sox's as they ignite!

Do you have a youTube channel? I do, my username is andycflbulb

I recently dreamed that the F32T8 wraparound light in my bathroom wasn't working right, either it wouldn't light at all or the ends of the tubes would just glow dimly. I took off the cover, the lamps were glowing at the ends with a little but of the true color of the lamps, like on a glow starter. Anyway, they were Philips ALTOs but had that 80s
            PHILIPS
WESTINGHOUSE LAMPS

type etch! Weird!

Hey sorry it's been so long since I've visited this forum, I have been busy with house repairs unfortunately. Now I do not have a YouTube channel unfortunately, I will definitely check yours out! I still have yet to get down to the Sox lamps to take pictures and videos! I really anticipate doing soon as I want to know if they are LPS lamps or not! It'lll be about 45 minute drive to an hour drive to get to them, and I will probably do it on the weekend when the wife is at work in the evening this way I can catch them firing up hopefully, I may wait until the days are slightly longer. In a town near where I live on the back of an old electrical supply store that I used to go to when I was a child over 18 years ago, I believe there is a low pressure sodium lamp! I completely forgot about this one. I am really not sure though, as it could just be an extremely yellowed lens on the high-pressure sodium lamp! The other day I pulled up to it and I honestly could not tell… I don't really have a lot of experience with sox lamps in person although I am completely familiar with their design and style looks, I think they are the neatest bulb ever. even though they're my favorite bulb, I have yet to own one! I'm so fascinated by them. so that too is my plan, to determine whether or not that is a Sox lamp or a high-pressure sodium I plan to camp outside the store untill the light turns on at dusk, and it will be an instant answer when either there neon gas glowing of the sox lamp or just the familiar xenon like my high-pressure sodium Wallpack that I bought at the very store back in 1992! :-) oh, and I just had another dream three nights ago! It was quite vivid! I was walking in a substation surrounded by a lot of working and very vintage looking transformers and insulators and high-voltage switches of the sort. Inductors, fans capacitors everything you can think of that you would see at the transfer station! I was just wandering around it and it was at dusk again, I had the feeling that I was not supposed to be in there and we get in trouble if I was, and also very Yeary feeling that I had to keep a distance from the components yet i sort of felt trapped. I did not get shocked, but you could hear the high-voltage working all around. It is very unusual and eery yet pleasant and I felt at home, it was also my favorite type of weather, rainy drizzly and foggy get warm. I have been having many more of these dreams it seems ever since we started talking about them on this forum! And I am liking it very much! I hope I have one tonight! Well it's about 5 AM, I work second shift here and basically live at night while the wife is at work on third shift. I'm headed to bed now and hopefully I will have another dream of this sort since I am talking about it now. I truly hope so!! :-) LOL

I recently had a dream that my bathroom light had ALTOS but they had that PHLIPS WESTINGHOUSE LAMPS etch!

Last weekend I had a dream that I left a mercury vapor fixture running in the garage, and when I came back to check on it the lamp had exploded...