Some time back you all helped out with road works barriers and pots/flares… now I would like to look into the abyss.
In a 1980s city (a bit like Chicago / industrial district) what sort of hole-in-the-road am I going to find (apart from all the pot holes) and what will be down there?
Steel pipes?
Electric Cables?
Telephone Cables?
Concrete Pipes?
Brick Culverts?
Glazed (dark red) Pipes?
Gas pipes?
Does anyone have any pics or a link please?
How thick would the road be (well, it makes a change from "how wide…)?
If a gas leak could happen what service trucks would be around?
Now, getting really ambitious… if some clown has jack-hammered through a water pipe… how do I model water spraying upwards?
Why do any easy scene when you can make life really hard work?
When did utility companies start having hydraulic booms (Hiabs) on their trucks?
I used to be a city employee. I got to see several water main breaks. They cause a real mess, buy the water usually bubles up, not sprays up. The only real geyser that I saw was when a car accident sheared off a fire hydrant. That was quite a show. I would model it with a clear plastic dowel and water effects from woodland scenics. Also I bet some cool effects could be made from fiber optic strands. Lots of those around for Christmas.
About 20 years ago in Columbus, OH, there was a giant sink hole that formed on Broad St, the main east/west street through downtown. It swallowed up a Mercedes. Fortunately, the driver was uninjured. It made national headlines. If you can find a picture of that, it might help.
If the Police are “looking into it” there could be doughnuts down there, or perhaps the Mercedes. In cities like New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angles, Boston,etc., there could be some form of “commuter” rail service - subway, rapid transit. Probably a wide variety of electric powered cars or locos. The balance of the “things” that you list could or would be possible.
You might try searching the Web for Boston’s Big Dig, or New York’s history of underground construction for some photos. A lot like box cars, there are too few pictures of the common every day things like that hole in the street. Who cared about those enough to snap a picture, when there was that pretty girl, big ship, new locomotive ready to be captured.
In June of 2001 my wife won a trip to Halifax from New York. Our biggest expense for the trip was film and development of pictures, my wife turned out to be the “japanese tourist” with a camera. Our cruise shp docked next to the Intrepid, complete with a Concorde on her deck. The morning of our return to New York she shot several pictures of the World Trade Center silhouetted against the rising sun. Less that three months later the “importance” of those photos changed so much.
For the benefit of those that appreciate the full meaning of JFK’s speach in Berlin I’m planning a doughnut stand called “Kennedy’s” with a whole queue of black-and-whites lined up…
For those that need to have it explained to them like I did a “Berliner” is not a resident of Berlin but a German ring doughnut… with nothing in the middle.
Nothing especially political… I just love irony.
For those of you who love the films of that era I am also having “Kissoff’s”… either a dentist or surplus military store - haven’t decided yet. I can’t figure out what business “Strangelove” would be in… an MD doesn’t get a big enough sign.
What’s a sub? Is it a huge filled bread roll like a baguette? If so, would it have been around in the 80s or is it one of these modern new-fangled things? OR?
Also known as a “Hero” in the New York City area, and purveyed at “Subway” and “Quisnos”. One for dietary reasons with less FAT and the other for more meat. Hmm strange names for the same things!
How about “Dr. Strangelove’s Famous Snake Bite Oil” factory!
In a short answer to your question, yes and no. Depending on how modern the industrial district is, electric and phone lines may still be on poles. Concrete pipes for storm sewers and even sewers, water maybe in old clay pipes or steel, gas in steel, red pipe would come from older buildings as sewer lines.
Some districs had an alley behind the whole block, so electric and phone lines were in back.
Streets could be quite thick as asphalt/blacktop covered old concrete or cobblestone/ brick paving and even covered up old trolley tracks and rail sidings if they were nearby.
A sinkhole could be done by digging out about a half inch deep by one inch wide hole and partially submerge a car in it, add muddy colored resin water or thin plaster, paint muddy color and coat with varnish. Just bury half the car,
A gas leak would involve gas company trucks, utility boxed pick ups, utility boxed ton and a halves, a back hoe, and at least ten supervisors. If it’s a large leak, add firetrucks, emt vehicles, and police.
Telescoping utility trucks (electric and phone have been around since at least sixties.
Silverspike: It’s hoagie not hoggie. Subs (short for submarine-sandwhich because of their shape) are generally 12" long.
And as I remember Beriliners, they were jelly-filled dougnuts sprinkled with sugar, (I lived in Germany for 25 years).
About 20 years ago , they resurfaced our main street in Glens Falls,NY, (aka “Hometown, USA” during WW II - made it into Life magazine).
They scraped off the asphalt, (about 12"), down to the original yellow brick pavement which still had streetcar tracks embedded in it. The car barn for one of the trolly companies still stands on a nearby street, (it’s now an office furniture store). The streetcars were gone here by the late forties.
Um, maybe - a Hogger is railroad slang for an engineer.
Salem, OR had a water main (and I mean main) break a couple years back - some of the local businesses are below street level and apparently they were flooded in seconds flat.
I imagine that with a sinkhole you’d see a lot of conduit pipes, probably some of which are broken at one or both ends, leaving the broken pipe at the bottom, and maybe some free hanging cables running across it as well. Unless it’s at or very near an intersection, most of it will likely be going in the same direction as the street, with some pipes coming out from one side or the other to hook into the main pipes (think water and sewer (ick!) drops).
If I recall correctly, Joe’s sinkhole was in (or under) his driveway.
Some time back, Bob Vila and company renovated a house in Chicago and had to dig down to the water and sewer mains to make a new set of connections. The water main was about four feet down and appeared to be cast iron covered with tar. The excavators also uncovered (but didn’t damage) a small-diameter gas line - the main was farther out in the street, in unexcavated pavement.
In an older city, it might be possible to uncover several layers of asphalt (each about 2" thick) with brick or Belgian block below, and maybe even split logs below that (flat sides up.) A more recent subdivision would have thinner pavement - a single 3" layer on residential side streets, possibly as much as 6" on a major thoroughfare. Also, present-day repaving usually starts by stripping the old pavement right down to bare ground. (A lot of modern bedroom communities in Chicagoland have a core nugget of antique historical construction surrounded by a sea of cookie-cut tract houses.)
If you are excavating Main Street it might be possible to find old streetcar rails (on ties, surrounded by Belgian block) under tho layers of asphalt. That would be an interesting effect.
As for the thickness of the street itself, I was in Atlanta one time and saw two different streets being work on, and these were for heavy traffic including big trucks and semi’s. One street was asphalt over concrete. The concrete was about 9 inches thick and the asphalt overlay was about 5 inches thick. The other street was all asphalt and was a little over a foot thick. I wouldn’t have wanted to be the guy on the jack hammer!
the 1980s was before my time and the only city i have lived in or rather close to is leesville, la. the main highway goin through town is a 4 lane called 171. the part goin through the city itself is asphalt over concrete. the concrete is 5 or 6 " thick and the asphalt around 3 or 4" thick.
If those doughnuts are jelly filled I’m going to need to know the favourite jelly…
You know when you forget to check out which way the jelly injection hole is? Well at least some of the officers standing around are going to need to be “weathered”… [}:)]
The large main with tar covering is interesting. I think that some of our ould mains were like that. Certainly where a main laid on the surface alongside a rail track came out of the ground/ went into the ground the curve and about 6’ were always banded with a thick black fabric that looked like the black stuff was tar.
That reminds me… our telegraph and utility poles used to have the 8’ from the ground up coated in black goo… thick cresote I think… where they were in sidewalks they would have 1"x1" strips of wood about 2" apart all round them to stop people brushing against them and getting messed up. The goo used to get hot and sticky on summer days. The whole of the post and the strips were brown like an ordinary creosoted fence. Did any of this or similar happen with poles in the US?
I very much like the idea of running an alley at the back of the buildings on “main street” with the utilities there. As I am planning things there will be main street, shopd/offices, the alley if I have space and then a raised double track. Main street will have street running/switching… so my leak can’t be too big or it would stop ops.
I guess that there’s a difference between hydraulic/telescopic loading booms and the cradles used by utility cos for accessing pole lines. I think that Boley are doing some modern ones (probably post 1990 so too late for me) but I’ve never seen any of either modelled for any period…? Anyone got a