Tuesday - August 04, 2020
Just Mailing It In This Rainy Morning
I’m such a fan of the PO. Vilmar will understand.
Mail in ballots are flat out wrong, an opportunity rife for corruption. Ballot harvesting - an operative comes around your neighborhood to collect them all - is even worse. Guaranteed corruption.
Simple Solution?
Too afraid to vote in person? Hmmm ... I wonder if ... set up the polling place with one of those counters surrounded by plastic walls. Worker behind the desk all gowned gloved masked. Positive ventilation system blows air outwards. You walk in ... one at a time ... with your ballot envelope ... clerk checks the voter rolls, checks your ID / voter registration, you sign the digital screen with the just wiped wand/pen AFTER you’ve been verified and watched your ballot go into the locked and sealed collection bin. CCTV from 3 angles covers the entire event, cameras run all day, data saved to disk or chip.
Such an arrangement could be built in a couple hours for small expense. When the numbered collection box gets full, several people come in to seal up and evidence sign the old one, count the envelopes several times and sign to that, and put in a new box, identifying themselves on CCTV. GoPro vidcam wearing workers follow the box through the building to the evidence locker, past several locked doors and sign it in with a guard as witness.
The whole Deliver Your Vote process takes under a minute, and the collection box exchange and securing takes only a couple minutes.
No mailing, no lost envelopes, no boxes of votes that magically appear at the last second. This isn’t rocket science.
Of course this will be more difficult in the big cities. But any town or small city under ~~ 50K population should be able to do it. The whole idea is Chain of Evidence, just like the cops do. And CCTV and data chips are so cheap it’s just silly.
Yeah, some people really are not able to get out, and get over to the polling places. Prove it, and you can vote by mail. You “can’t” show up because it’s a minor inconvenience? TFB, then you’re not going to vote.
Naturally the voter rolls would be up to date, matched against the tax records, the credit card company and cell phone address lists, coroner data and the III criminal database etc. As I’ve said a hundred times before, registration closes at least 30 days prior, no exceptions.
!!! ~~~~ !!! ~~~~ !!!
Crivens, it is REALLY pouring out there today. Since long before dawn. Thankfully it’s cooler, and so far not a breath of wind. But if the big wind shows up later, after 8 -10 hours of ground saturating rainfall, we’re going to lose a lot of trees. Not cool.
The tropical storm winds were reaching the state by 8 a.m. Tuesday and were expected to increase quickly as Isaias was moving through at 33 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
Heavy rain and the potential for flash floods continues to be a significant threat, but that threat has shifted west as the aniticipated track of Isaias shifted west overnight.
The Jersey Shore is expected to be spared the heaviest rainfall though 1 to 2 inches are still possible. The north and western parts of the state, including Hunterdon, Warren and Sussex counties, are still forecast to receive more than 4 inches of rain.
...
The state got a taste of the storm Monday evening as a patch of thunderstorms moved through. A wind gust of 70 mph was recorded at the Robert J. Miller Airpark in Ocean County, and one of 59 mph was recorded at Neshanic Station, according to the weather service’s Mount Holly office.
Neshanic Station is just across the county line here in Somerset County. It’s a sleepy little crossroads semi-rural kind of place, off the beaten track but only a mile or so from a major highway. Situated on the banks of the South Branch of the Raritan River, just a mile or two of where both north and south branches join and flow down to Rutgers, it was a mill town and a produce shipping point back in the long ago day.
There is a rather rare double span lenticular bridge there in perfect condition, with a very old derelict 2 span Pratt through truss RR bridge on one side, and a high plate girder RR bridge, still used daily, a bit downstream on the other side.
There are only about 100 lenticular bridges in the whole country, many are derelict now, and most of them are single span. Binghamton NY has a 3 span one, and Middlesex County CT has a 5 span one. All of these were built 135 years ago by the Berlin Iron Bridge Company.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/04/2020 at 08:56 AM
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Permalink • Monday - August 03, 2020
Bang, Poof, Dropped
The damaged sections of the bridge that burned in the derailment last week in Tempe AZ have been brought down with explosive cutting charges. The rest of the bridge seems OK at this point, so a similar kind of steel truss sections will be built to replace the damaged ones.
story and video, plus link to a ton of picks from last week’s accident
This isn’t Hollywood, so don’t expect to see much. Controlled cutting demolition is like, poof, clunk, done.
At about 8:15 a.m., a brief spark and a puff of black smoke was visible as the designated portion of the bridge collapsed to the ground underneath. A loud booming sound could be heard as the ground briefly shook.
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Crews will likely cut the downed bridge into smaller pieces to truck it out of the site on Sunday, said Clint Schelbitzki, general director of public affairs for Union Pacific Railroad.
“Our goal is to get that area cleared so that we can prep for bridge construction,” he said, adding that there is currently no timeline for when that section of the bridge would be reconstructed.
Schelbitzki said the rest of the bridge was structurally safe. However, he noted officials were still assessing it, including whether any components needed to be replaced. He said the standing portion of the bridge would remain the same while the reconstructed portion of the bridge might appear “a little different” when complete.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/03/2020 at 09:16 PM
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Permalink • Wednesday - July 29, 2020
Fire On The Lake
The Salt River Union Pacific Rail Road Bridge was built in 1912 by the American Bridge Company of New York. It was built as a 7 section pin connected Pratt Through truss with wooden trestle extensions, but was later expanded to a 9 section Pratt. At some later point the bridge was significantly upgraded with massive H beam deck girders and rivet plates. This was a pretty tough bridge.
A huge fire is burning on a train on a bridge over Tempe Town Lake. The fire was pumping thick black smoke into the air. That smoke plume was visible for miles.
Union Pacific said as many as 10 train cars derailed at about 6:15 a.m. The south side of the bridge then collapsed and caught fire. A spokesman said its crew was not hurt but one person at the park was treated for smoke inhalation.
Union Pacific spokesman Tim McMahan, who said the train was en route to Phoenix from Tucson, explained that two of the three tanker cars on the ground under the bridge contained cyclohexanone. The third contained a rubber material.
“None are reported leaking, and no tank cars were involved in the fire,” he said. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, cyclohexanone is a colorless oily liquid that is both flammable and an irritant. It’s mostly used for the production of nylon.
The cars that burned for hours were carrying lumber, some of which fell into the lake.
Camille Kimball was riding her bike under the bridge just a moment before it collapsed. She said the noise of the train became deafening, and as she came off the bridge, she saw people with their phone cameras trained behind her.
“I turned around to look and got the fright of my life,” she said. “Now there’s fire pouring into the lake from the middle of the bridge. ... It looks like a scene from hell, truly. A scene from hell. ... The flames are intense and the sky is filled with black smoke.” She described the experience as “surreal.”
...
It’s not clear what caused the derailment and subsequent bridge collapse and fire, but according to Union Pacific’s website, the bridges are visually inspected every 30 days. McMahan said the bridge’s annual inspection was on July 9. Arizona’s Family is working on getting that report.
While in ancient times the Salt River flowed year round, but with the coming of agriculture it became little more than an arroyo, but was subject to rather intense seasonal floods. So much so that the previous 3 bridges in the same spot washed away, some of them just a few years after being built. ABC did a better job with this iteration, a giant dam made lake Rooselvelt upstream in 1991 slowed the river flowol, and many years later when Tempe dammed the Salt River to create their Town Park Lake [1999] reservoir, floods were finally controlled. Mostly.
It may be a scene from Hell, but it’s also a blessed miracle. The fire is on the bridge over the lake, so there is no chance of it spreading to the city. And while the tanker cars of cyclcohexane fell in the collapse, they did not leak and they did not burn. That would have been a major catastrophe, certainly poisoning the lake, probably emitting all kinds of toxic fumes, but such a sudden eruptive conflagration would have probably destroyed the heavy freight RR bridge that is only yards away from this single track train bridge.
I don’t know if the bridge can be rescued and repaired. Probably not. It’s probably cheaper to replace it with some great chunk of concrete.
PS - somebody better call Rosie O’D. This is now the 2nd time in history that fire has melted steel.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/29/2020 at 02:10 PM
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Permalink • Friday - June 12, 2020
One Bridge To Rule Them All
4th largest seaport in Russia brought to a halt because of rail bridge collapse
Just one rail line connects Murmansk to rest of Russia
I was going to post on this a week or so ago, but figured, eh, it’s just one little bridge. I didn’t know it was the only bridge on the only set of tracks into this Scandinavian port city. After decades of overuse - more than 1,000 boxcars a day - it gave out. Efforts to repair it failed. And now the city is on it’s knees. It wasn’t even that big a bridge, only 420 feet long, with a support pier in the middle. Glorious Soviet Project #418, lasted 90 years. Buh bye. Murmansk is on the Kola Peninsula, just east of Finland. The bridge is about 6 miles south of the city.
[ June 2 ] Russian Railways has halted passenger and cargo rail transport between the northern port of Murmansk and the rest of Russia after the collapse of the only railway bridge linking the two, the national rail company said on Tuesday.
The foundations of the bridge across the river Kola were washed away by rapidly melting snow and strong flows of water on Saturday, and the bridge gave way on Monday, the Emergencies Ministry said. No-one was hurt during the incident, officials added.
“This route is the only one, so a temporary ban has been imposed on the loading of all goods to the Murmansk transport hub after the damage to the bridge,” Russian Railways told Reuters.
The region’s governor, Andrey Chibis, said authorities aimed to link Murmansk back up to the nationwide railway network this month and that they were accelerating existing plans to build a new bridge, the TASS news agency reported.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles probes into serious crimes, said it had opened a criminal investigation into what it said was a suspected violation of transport safety. It gave no further details.
The Murmansk Commercial Seaport, which is owned by coal mining company SUEK, handled turnover of 17.6 million tonnes of coal last year. Coal is transported by rail to the port for export.
[ June 3 ] The bridge across the Kola River was built in 1930 and upgraded in 2014. This week, the aging piece of infrastructure did not withstand the quickly rising river waters and collapsed.
Engineers had discovered ruptures in one of the bridge pillars already late last week and rail transportation had been halted. But restoration works did not succeed and major parts of the bridge on Monday afternoon fell into the river.
The result is a major blow to transport connections to the far northern Russian city.
“Yes, the wagons are standing. Murmansk is closed,” a source in a local company told news agency Interfax. The Russian Railways that operates the route has now reportedly halted all transportation to Murmansk.
The situation has created a major headache for both industry and population in the region. A major share of all goods that are transported to the Arctic city comes by rail and thousands of people use train as preferred means of transportation.
Murmansk declares State of Emergency
The state of emergency was declared on the 11th June and will last until the railway connection to the City of Murmansk is restored, regional authorities inform.
Companies in the region are now seriously feeling pain. The Murmansk Seaport, the 4th biggest in the country, normally handles about 1000 rail wagons per day, and the biggest regional companies, among them Nornickel, Eurochem and Phosagro, all depend on both shipping and rail transportation.
Posted by Drew458
on 06/12/2020 at 10:17 AM
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Permalink • Wednesday - March 04, 2020
Moving That WIBCO Phoenix Bowstring
Ok, I’m a month behind on this one.
Pick It Up And Put It Away
Minnesota Engineers Remove 1873 Kern Bridge From Crumbling Foundations
Longest bowstring arch truss in USA, one of the few Phoenix column bridges left, this iron maiden is going to be warehoused and put somewhere else, someday
A southern Minnesota bridge nearly as old as the state itself is on the road to a new home, after being delicately moved from its precarious perch on Thursday.
Crews using a pair of cranes carefully lifted the 147-year-old, 189-foot-long Kern Bridge in one piece, off its crumbling abutments along the Le Sueur River and alongside a nearby town road.
“We were all kind of holding our breath,” said Lisa Bigham, state aid engineer for the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s District 7. “It took a while to get everything kind of in place, the cranes to be positioned where they needed to be. Then, we were just kind of watching. And then, all of a sudden you could see air in between the bridge and the abutment. And it actually went very smoothly.”
...
The Kern Bridge had spanned the Le Sueur River south of Mankato, Minn., since 1873, just 15 years after Minnesota became a state.
Also known as the Yaeger Bridge, it carried people, wagons and farm animals, then cars until being closed to traffic in the early 1990s.
MnDOT reported that it’s the only remaining example of a “bowstring arch through-truss” bridge left in Minnesota, and the longest remaining in the United States. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Kern Bridge was built of wrought iron in 1873 by the prolific Wrought Iron Bridge Company of Canton, OH (WIBCO), who built for the long haul; hundreds of their bridges are still in use today. As a testament to it’s strength, cranes picked up this nearly 150 year old bridge by both ends and it didn’t bend or break. Well done WIBCO.
This one is a very rare puppy though. It is of the older bowstring arch truss design, not a Pratt or a Warren through truss. And the arch is made of Phoenix columns, specially bent to order by the iron masters at the Phoenix Iron Company. So it’s rare X rare X rare. It is nearly 100% original, which is also highly rare for such an old bridge.
The bridge was closed to vehicles in 1990. Plenty of more information and photos located here.
Phoenix columns ... are pretty riveting.
Posted by Drew458
on 03/04/2020 at 06:44 PM
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Permalink • Thursday - December 19, 2019
The Original Bridge Post
And you thought your favorite old bridge was old. Ha!
From the very dawn of recorded history. The town of Tello in southern Iraq, a bit northwest of Basra, was once the Sumerian city of Girsu. 4,000 years ago. There was a river. They wanted to get across it whether it was the rainy season or not. So they built a bridge. Out of bricks. It’s still there.
What looks like the fallen remains of both sides of an arch bridge are actually the arced brick abutment walls and their supporting buttresses. The bridge, probably wooden planks, spanned between them. The arced flairs of the abutments would work to channel water when the river was high.
The bridge at Tello was built in the third millennium BC, making it the oldest bridge still in existence. This remarkable survival will be preserved by a team of British Museum archaeologists and Iraqi heritage professionals who are being trained to protect ancient sites that have suffered damage at the hands of Daesh (or the so-called Islamic State). Restoring the 4,000-year-old bridge will be a potent symbol for a nation emerging from decades of war.
Built for the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu, the bridge was only rediscovered in 1929. Described at the time as an ‘enigmatic construction’, it has been variously interpreted as a temple, dam and water regulator. Recent studies using 1930s photographs as well as recently declassified satellite imagery from the 1960s, alongside new research at the site, have confirmed that it was a bridge over an ancient waterway and that it is (at the time of writing) the earliest-known bridge in the world. Since the excavations nearly 90 years ago, the bridge has remained open and exposed, with no identifiable conservation work to address its long-term stability or issues of erosion, and no plans to manage the site or tell its story to the wider world.
From other pictures it’s plain that this bridge was quite wide, albeit not very long. Easily as wide as a modern 4 lane highway.
The British Museum will train a group of female archaeologists to help restore the world’s oldest bridge with the hope of bringing tourists back to Iraq.
The ancient Sumerian structure at the entrance to the 4,000-year-old city of Girsu in southern Iraq will be used as a training site for the eight women from Mosul.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/19/2019 at 11:17 PM
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Permalink • Saturday - August 20, 2016
Rule 34 Is For Real
Rule 34 is the internet rule that says that some kind of porn exists for everything. Shoes, puppies, blueprints, Swiss cheese, rare books, anything. And if porn doesn’t exist for it, the mere mention that such is the case will cause porn to be created for it.
After making my previous bridge post, I stared at my work and eventually realized there was a girl in the picture. Hiding half the truss, thanks. Fine. If that’s how the game is played, let’s go. I knew of one picture right off the top of my head. I even knew the model’s name. So to the search engines, and I plug in “Ariel bridge”
and what comes back is ...
Not what I expected, but both awesome and abhorrent in its own right.
Awesome, because what you’re looking at is a bowstring truss bridge, made from both wrought and cast iron (like I just wrote about) and utilizing our old friend the Phoenix Column. This means the bridge is older than I beams, but younger than the Civil War (because after the war the Phoenix Iron Company turned swords into plowshares almost literally and used their cannon building technology to make rigid braced hollow tubing that could be easily assembled on site; ie the Phoenix Column). And this particular bridge is given superb coverage by my fellow bridge hunter Nathan Holth. Awesomer, because it’s a “WIBCO”; a bridge made by the prolific Wrought Iron Bridge Company of Canton, Ohio. The bridge now lives in a park in Mt. Vernon Ohio, so maybe our friend Turtler can go and visit. Google found it for me because the bridge is funded by the Ariel Foundation. Figures, right?
Abhorrent because the bowstring truss is very strong, so it was a total diss to just nail the thing to the side of a walkway - not even a bridge, just a wooden path with railings on pilings!!! - to make it look like a bridge. This little arch could support a steam locomotive, even though it’s 140 years old. Also abhorr - ok, not really abhorrent, just a bit embarrassing, because the pictures I was looking for all came back in the search too; every one of them already stored in the back room here at this blog. Oh the photos are out there galore; I’m just the only one who renamed them to name the subjects.
Here’s what I was looking for ... mildly NSFW, plus a few others similar, because this is a Rule 34 post after all.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/20/2016 at 01:40 PM
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Permalink • full countered Pratt pony
Yes, it’s finally time for another bridge post.
Counters are the diagonal members running in the opposite direction. They help manage shear stress. By using the full set of counters you get a bridge made of “X"s, which is very good at supporting transitional loads ... like when a locomotive drives up one end of the span, across it, and off the other end. This is also the very best reason to use forged steel components, because steel can handle switching from tension to compression, which wood and iron can’t. Wood is always weak in tension, cast iron is weak in tension, and forged iron is weak in compression.
Too cute ... the model’s name is Bailey. Like the Bailey bridge? Maybe she has a sister named Bridge-ette.
Woo hoo!
Posted by Drew458
on 08/20/2016 at 12:49 PM
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Permalink • Saturday - January 02, 2016
Pull her papers forever
The Lick Creek bridge located in downtown Paoli, Indian took a tragic fall on Christmas Day when when a 23 year old Semi-truck driver, Mary Lambright thought it was a good idea to take her 43,000 pounds of bottled water across the 100 year old bridge. Lambright who was accompanied by her 17 year old cousin in a leased Penske semi abstained no injuries as the time of the accident. She didn’t get out of the situation easy, the Paoli Police department cited her for overweight on a bridge, disregarding a traffic control device and reckless driving of her tractor-trailer. No one was injured at the time of the collapse
The old iron bridge on South Gospel Street in Paoli was destroyed when a truck driver disregarded the weight and height and drove a load weighing over 43,000 lbs. over it Christmas Day.
According to police, Mary Lambright, 23, of Fredricksburg, Ind., was operating a 2015 Volvo tractor pulling a 53-foot semi-trailer loaded with bottled water when she crossed the bridge at about noon. Authorities estimated the load of water weighed around 43,000 lbs.
As Lambright’s truck entered the bridge, the trailer’s top was ripped off due to its height. She continued across the bridge until the weight of the tractor and trailer caused it to collapse.
The craziest part isn’t that 23-year-old Mary Lambright drove her 30-ton truck onto this tiny bridge in Paoli, Indiana built in 1880. It’s that she knew that the bridge’s weight limit was six tons. She just didn’t know how many pounds that was.
Seriously, that’s what she told the police after the crash on Christmas, as they note in their report:
Ms. Lambright was aware of the iron bridge stating she had driven on it several times in her personal vehicle and was also aware of the posted signage “no semis, weight limit of 6 tons”. When asked by Paoli Police why she continued through the bridge knowing the weight limit was only 6 tons she admitted to not knowing how many pounds that was. She was advised the weight of the vehicle at the time of the crash was close to 30 tons.
Lambright, who got her CDL earlier this year, said she wasn’t comfortable backing up her Volvo truck, so she just chanced it on the bridge.That bet didn’t exactly pay out.
She knew what the weight limits were, she knew what the clearance was, and if she had the awareness of half a jar of peanut butter she knew damn well her load exceeded both. But screw that, she “wasn’t comfortable” making a U-turn in her truck, so she went and did what she damn pleased. And this antique 8 panel pin-connected Pratt through-truss paid the price. The pity of it all is that the fines she will face are minuscule. A couple hundred bucks total, and that’s about it. And a piece of history is destroyed. [ commenters noted that parts of the bridge had to be cut away to allow the truck’s removal. ]
This nice example of an iron kit bridge - it wasn’t steel in 1880 it was iron - most likely won’t be repaired. Not with iron. And not to it’s original specification. They might rebuild it, but it will get “upgraded” with massive steel floor beams, one-piece giant I beam stringers, and welded chords. In other words, it will sort of look like an old bridge, but have the carrying capacity of something modern. And it won’t really even be a truss bridge anymore. These kit bridges were the real thing; every point where the vertical, horizontal, and diagonal beams came together was on an axle pin. They’re completely flexible structures until they’re complete, at which point they become as stiff as any solid structure. That’s the whole idea behind truss bridges, and it was the pin connected chord variety like this one that expressed that engineering principal most honestly. Welded plate bridges are stronger, and they are truss bridges too, but the flexing takes part in the welded plate itself, which is a little cheat on the pure theory of triangular sectional creation.
Oh, and note the upside down deck truss on the floor beams under the bridge. Very rare. This made the road bed a bit stronger, made the bridge a bit lighter, but most importantly it saved a town a couple of bucks and the need to move some really heavy I beams around. Like I said, these are kit bridges. Order one by mail, and the bridge company builds it for you, numbers all the parts, takes it apart, and ships it to you via rail car. Your local workers put Tab A in Slot B and assemble it, no training needed. And it stays up for 135 years. Or longer. Until the luck runs out.
It occurs to me that we have almost the exact same bridge right here in Hunterdon County. Same size, same age, same builder, same highly rare trussed floor beams. Better condition. It’s a beauty I visit every year. I wonder if theirs was put together using hydraulic rivets like ours was, or if they used hand hammered ones?
Thanks to Rich L for the link.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/02/2016 at 11:21 PM
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Permalink • Wednesday - September 30, 2015
Don’t Look Down
It’s a bridge to nowhere from nowhere, but with a transparent floor made from real glass and a 590 foot drop to the ground, the “Haohan Qiao” or “Brave Man’s Bridge” in Shiniuzhai National Geological Park is the country’s scariest but perfectly safe suspension bridge.
This tourist attraction is not for the faint of the heart.
China has opened a glass bottomed bridge hovering 590 feet above the valley floor in Pingjiang county in Hunan province.
...
Stretching almost 1,000 feet long, the glass suspension bridge is named Haohan Qiao, translating in English to “Brave Men’s Bridge” and it’s not hard to see why.The bridge was originally wooden until its conversion using glass panes 24mm thick (about .95 inches) and 25 times stronger than normal glass.
Outside of setting records, the glass architecture is meant to minimise any disruption to the surrounding scenery.
“I believe in nature, harmony, balance and beauty. Nature is beautiful as is,” said Haim Dotan, the Tel Aviv-based architect who designed the bridge’s concept. “The Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge was designed to be invisible as possible – a white bridge disappearing into the clouds.”
With a suspension constructed only of two side steel beams, banisters with side-hanging stay cables and a glass deck, the bridge may look minimal – but it can withstand high winds, earthquakes, frost and the weight of 800 visitors at a time.
Of course, if walking across it isn’t enough of an adventure, the bridge also has plans to offer the highest bungee jump in the world, beating out current record holder, the 233m Macau Tower bungee jump.
...
The developers plan for the bridge to host fashion shows, and they planned a specific area for bungee jumping.
Posted by Drew458
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Permalink • Tuesday - September 08, 2015
Lockatong Bridge is falling down, falling down
A year after being squashed by giant crane, local bridge will be demolished and replaced
They try so hard to save the old bridges here, but sometimes one gets hurt so bad you just have to let it go.
proper engineering at work: even when subject to more than double the maximum expected load, the bridge didn’t break but only bent
A bridge on Route 519 that collapsed under the weight of a crane more than a year ago is due to come down soon. Demolition is expected to start around Sept. 14, county Public Works Director Thomas Mathews said Friday.
Demolition marks the first visible step in the bridge’s replacement, but much has been happening behind the scenes to move the project forward, Mathews said.
“A lot of preliminary stuff has been taking place,” he said. A contract has been awarded to Tony and Sons construction company, and “shop drawings and prefabrication drawings have been submitted,” Mathews said. “We’re targeting a completion date of April 1, but they’ll be rewarded if they get it done sooner.”
The bridge was not marked with a load limit, however the roads in that area are limited to 40 ton loadings. Somehow a giant crane was driven across the state and over the bridge without travel permits, and it’s 85 ton mass gave this old Warren pony truss a bad case of the bends. For destroying the bridge, which will cost the county more than a million to replace, plus 18 or more months of detours, the crane company was fined ... $3,000.
Posted by Drew458
on 09/08/2015 at 09:08 AM
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Permalink • Sunday - December 14, 2014
A Two For One Deal
A small suspension bridge somewhere. Interesting use of a 3rd cable set to stabilize the hand rails, which are actually mounted pony-style to the cross beams under the decking.
And Ariel seems to be pretty well suspended too. Looking good, as always.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/14/2014 at 01:13 PM
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Permalink • Thursday - December 11, 2014
Invisible Bridge
You’ve heard about infinity pools, right? The ones where the edge of the pool seems to blend in with the horizon, and the pool sort of disappears ...
Here’s an infinity bridge.
Pretty hard to see, isn’t it? Maybe we should call it an invisible bridge.
Actually, it has the nickname of the Moses Bridge, because it parts the waters as if by magic.
Like everything else in life, it’s a matter of perspective ...
... because what they are calling a sunken bridge actually floats. The bridge is made of wood.
Pretty cool. This sweet bit of architecture spans the moat at Fort De Roovere, a 17th Century earthen fort in The Netherlands.
http://www.dezeen.com/2011/11/17/sunken-bridge-by-road/
http://inhabitat.com/sunken-pedestrian-bridge-in-the-netherlands-parts-moat-waters-like-moses/
Posted by Drew458
on 12/11/2014 at 12:17 PM
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Permalink • Wednesday - December 10, 2014
It’s Nowhere on both ends
Peiper’s corner of the world. It’s a bowstring arch box girder pony truss, a pedestrian walkway built around 1885. External lateral pipe struts were added at a later date to reduce vibration; not from the people walking on it but from the ground shaking around it. Earthquakes? No, trains. The building behind it is now a car park, but once was a railroad station. The railroad is long gone, tracks and yards as well, and even the name of the place has changed from it’s original Cheese Hill. Or ceoselJust this bridge remains. I don’t think it even has a footpath. It’s just a bit of scenic ... stuff.
Cities grow and shrink, and always change. And they change the landscape around them, for better or worse.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/10/2014 at 11:38 AM
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Tracked at head to the Momarms site
The Brownshirts: Partie Deux; These aare the Muscle We’ve Been Waiting For
On: 03/14/23 11:20
Vietnam Homecoming
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On: 03/20/21 07:00
meaningless marching orders for a thousand travellers ... strife ahead ..
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Tracked at Casual Blog
[...] RTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPL [...]
On: 07/17/17 04:28
a small explanation
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Tracked at yerba mate gourd
Find here top quality how to prepare yerba mate without a gourd that's available in addition at the best price. Get it now!
On: 07/09/17 03:07
DISCLAIMER
THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.
Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.
- Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
- Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
- Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
- Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere
THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.
Copyright © 2004-2015 Domain Owner
Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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