Cincy and St. Paul has spent $$$$$$$$$$$ just to move utlities before a single rail is laid. Um escuse me but how did we operate streetcars for 60 years (1900-1959) and also have underground utlities? I remember seeing in Christiansen, Harry books Cleveland Streetcars 1-3 a temp runaround track would be installed in case the street had to be dug up.
for so many reasons.
1. street car and light rail ROW installations are now built to almost class 1 RRs subgrade specifications.
2. These subgrade upgrades require excavations under the tracks of anywhere 2 ft to more than 10 ft. That will uncover most utillities that are under the ROW + up to as much as 10 ft to each side of ROW. Why not upgrade those utilities at that time ?
3. After compaction a fabric then is placed 1st then a fill is placed then the utilities that need to cross the are placed at whatever depth they require.
4. The term " move utilities" is somewhat of a misnomer. All utilities required to cross the ROW need to be protected. All are placed in a single piece steel casing that the actual utility lines are then inserted. This casing will cross the streetcar ROW at a desired 90 degree angle if possible but however many lines are not able to cross at that angle.
5. These casings may prevent any water to erode the ROW fill if water was to follow the utility line + any settling of of the ROW fill will not break the utility line..
Why these casings ?
6. There are many more utilities today than the water, sewer, telephone, telegraph of the cited period. ALL those utilities used wooden & cast iron water lines, clay pipe sewer and telephone conduit. These are all subject to water leaks and breakage under the ROW.
7. Operationally a wash out of the car tracks can take many days to repair when the surface tracks are paved with concrete.
8. A shoo fly around any wash out is still expensive to build as there may be crushing of other utilities when a heavier than a PCC car runs over un prepared ROW.
9. Most importantly repairs are classed as operating expenses vs the building of new ROW is a capital cost. Operating costs are a big flag for reducing service / raising fares whereas capital costs are a one time cost & come from a different money pile than operating costs. especially true of FTA funds and may as well be in some states. .
10 old installations had cross ties that were in many cases untreated wooden with stick rail. unsed.
11. Now concrete ties and welded rail is used which would be more time & expensive to repair.
12. now if an utility line should break under the ROW the utility can access the line from either side ( many times a man hole ) , pull out broken line and replace much more quickly. This all at the cost for the utility and not from street car, light rail, subway, class 1 RRs, etc. The utilities are responsible for accepting the installation of the replacement utillity lines.
13. fewer service disruptions means more consistent ridership.
14. Galvanic actions have to be netrulized with the new stree car lines. Only casing can mitigate those problems.
Missing is the fact that various utilities installed since the end of previous Streetcar service may not be shielded from electro-galvinic effects cause by running the return current through the rails with the return of Streetcars (LRVs).
beaulieu Missing is the fact that various utilities installed since the end of previous Streetcar service may not be shielded from electro-galvinic effects cause by running the return current through the rails with the return of Streetcars (LRVs).
beaulieu; thanks forgot about that--- added it to my list.
Bonas Cincy and St. Paul has spent $$$$$$$$$$$ just to move utlities before a single rail is laid. Um escuse me but how did we operate streetcars for 60 years (1900-1959) and also have underground utlities? I remember seeing in Christiansen, Harry books Cleveland Streetcars 1-3 a temp runaround track would be installed in case the street had to be dug up.
In the 100+ years since the original streecar lines were built, the engineering world has learned many, many things about both the operation of 'streetcars' and the operation of 'utilities' and have developed standards for both - standards that were predominately developed upon failures involving both 'steetcars' and utilities over the years and the lessons learned from these failures. What was 'good enough' at the end of the 19th Century won't cut it in the 21st Century.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Seems that there are prefab concreate railroad pads that have the whole track in 12 foot blocks that dont require as much digging.
What we really have here is that when someone is proposing a streetcar line and the city leaders take them on what they are really saying is
"We need to upgrade all our utlities downtown to 21st century standards and we have found a way to finagle the feds to do it for us via the Federal Transit Adminstraion" So even if you never take the streetcar you will benifit in someway everytime you turn on the lights,use the internet or flush the toliet. New buildings can be built as hooking up to the new utlities will be much easier.
When you decide to make a major improvement there are always near by facilities that need upgrades. Usually they are best done as part of the project.
Can you imagine what would happen to a street car line if an old cast iron or clay pipe sewer under a street car line for several blocks started to collaspe ? You could have a shut down for more than a year to dig up the pipes replace them and take care of all the other utilities under the ROW /?
Town had a cast iron water pipe that suddenly developed many leaks, washed out seveal blocks, emergency water service 2 weeks took 2 weeks, fire protection reduced, repairs 4 months.with other utility crews having to be imported. do you want this possibility for your street car ?
In our society we value New and devalue maintaining the existing.
Our society views that once something is originally built - it will last forever without any further attention.
Placing things such as utilities just furter reinforces that perception - out of sight, out of mind.
Our society is only as strong as it's infrastructure permits. We vote more money to build more new infrastructure - and vote down money to maintain what we already have in existance.
You can pay to maintain things now, while they are still functional - or you can pay much, much more to repair what has failed and bring it up to current standards under emergency conditions.
The choice is yours!
BaltACDIn our society we value New and devalue maintaining the existing.
That may be true, Balt, but I don't know that it is necessarily true. Consider, for example, the restoration of Grand Central Terminal.
John
John WR BaltACDIn our society we value New and devalue maintaining the existing. That may be true, Balt, but I don't know that it is necessarily true. Consider, for example, the restoration of Grand Central Terminal.
OK, then, what about the restoration of Penn Station?
Much of this follows Leonard Reed et al. -- it's 'worth' something when enough people come to agree it is ... and plunk down their dollars and spend their time to back it up.
In the 1950s, Duesenberg SJs were 'old cars' that you might buy off a used-car lot for $500 (admittedly, that's about $15,000 in today's money, but...)
In 1974, I was offered a 1971 Hemi Cuda for $1500, in the parking lot of the White Castle in Fairview, NJ (across from Nungesser's, for people who know). I did not happen to have $1500 at the time. That same year, I saw a 427 Sting Ray convertible in Warminster, PA, with a 'for sale' sign reading $2500.
We are actually starting to see some vintage computing stuff start up in value. Those wacky computer watches are already commanding a premium. (But take your profits before the market crashes, as it did for high-end European classic cars a few years ago...)
I'd have thought MP54s were worthy of preservation. Looks like even with all the railfan light and heat about it... we're almost out of examples worthy or not.
On the other hand, there was considerable agitation within PRR in the late '40s to preserve S1 6100. The thing was ... there were dieselization bills to pay, and the scrap value was about $35,000 (about a million in today's money) -- and that was just too much to leave on the table to put the Big Engine in Northumberland...
RME
Let us look at the items that are replaced when updating utilities;
1. Many old sewer lines were 3 ft sections of clay pipe. Some joints were not even sealed and clay is very unforgiving of any shift of the ground underneath. Those 2 items mean lots of contamination of the soil which can migrate far from any break.
2. Water lines until after WW-2 were cast iron. It breaks not as fast as clay under any shift of the soil but ccannot take much flexing. Worse is most joints are lead filled and the lead can leach into the water supply. Where I live now almost 10 miles of cast iron had to be replaced due to lead contamination of the water. To make matters worse many service connections to the water mains used what is know as a " lead goose neck" great source of lead. If your water main was built before 1950 you need to have your water in your house checked !!!!! Cast iron pipes also have a habit of building up minerals on the inside of pipes reducing their inside diameter.
3. Some galvanized water lines installed from 1930 - 1950 were of a very poor quality know as depression era pipe. This pipe is now at the end of its life and will spring a leak at the drop of a hat. Had a home here that had pressure problems and when pipe caused a 8 ft deep street sink hole had over 25 leaks just in the crossing of the street. Was old depression pipe.
Now days water lines are mostly PVC that has a much greater flexibility ratio ( esp CL 9200 ) and a bell housing that is 9 - 12 inches deep ( earthquake prone area have bells up to 5 ft long so minor shifts will not break service ) The bell housing has one or more special gaskets rated for 500 years to prevent leaks. This kind of PVC is also used for sewer lines and in many jurisdictions are white where as the potable water lines are green. Dont know grey water color.
Steel pipes are used where there are possibilities of too much flexing of PVC. Steel pipes are built the same way AS PVC with the housing and seals. PVC pipe does not get mineral build up as it is too slick and the steel pipes are coated inside to prevent build up.
Water service lines are flexible polyethelyene (PE) that have a 500 year life.
Note; New gas lines, electric service lines, and the tubing for fiber and other services are also PE.
Now is it not nice to know those utility lines under your street car lines are of these materials ?
Bob,
I said it is not necessarily true that we devalue old things in preference to new ones. Certainly the old Pennsylvania Railroad Station was devalued. However, it was not torn down simply because the new was preferred; it was torn down in order to build Madison Square Garden on top of it. The tear down was done at a time when the Pennsylvania Railroad was going broke and trying to maintain itself with its real estate. For all of that I wish the original station had not been destroyed.
My references bewteen old and new was not directed toward 'monumental' type buildings so much as it was to the unseen, unsung infrastructure that makes buildings and peoples use of them possible in the first place. Water lines, Electric lines, Steam Lines, Communication Lines, Gray water sewage lines, Black water sewage lines.
As a society, we take all these pieces of the infrastructure that facilitate modern day life for granted. We don't give any thought or any investment into upgrading thes facilities and outside of the people responsible for keeping them operational, we give them no thought or consideration. We just expect them to be there when we want them to be there.
This is the kind of infrastructure that only gets any attention when it fails. We have all heard and/or read the reports about the overall 'dilapidated' state of the bridges in the counrty - yet we still aren't allocating sufficient investment to get these structures upto a standard of 'good repair'. Nobody cares about the 100 year old water mains under their feet, until the main fails, floods a neighborhood for hours or days and disrupts the delivery of clean water to a even wider area - and then the finger pointing begins as to why the main had not be upgraded 'years ago'. Yet come the next budget - there is still inadequate investment into upgrading the unseen infrastructure.
Out of sight, out of mind, out of money.
Digging around underground utilities is also more like archeology than new construction. Even using the best drawings that are labelled "as-built" utility folks only have a guide to what they'll find. Nothing in the drawings will show the condition of the actual utilities.
In a droll example of this, George Hilton's book on Cable Cars recalls a contractor in Dallas who bid on a sewer project and found an impossible mass of cast iron and concrete that was part of a Dallas cable railway project that was never finished. It sure didn't show up on the drawings.
If you really want a diffficult situation on utility lines. How about this
Steam lines.
Back in the early 1980's San Francisco rebuilt the cable car lines. When PG&E(the local utility) was approached about location of utility lines they pointed out the problem.Most of the steam line network was built with redwood pipes. No metal and much of it deep enough that their was no heat signature.
San Francisco network of steam lines was put in during the late 1890's and the original plans had been lost during the 1906 earthquake. PG&E had a good general idea where the lines were but no specifics.(We know that California St has a steam line in it, but have no idea if it is in the middle of the street by the curb under the sidewalk or how deep).
It was eventually sorted out. And the cable car lines were rebuilt without damaging any of the steam lines. And PG&E now has a better idea of where many of their steam lines are. What is interesting is the redwood piping is still holding up even after 120 years of service.
Rgds IGN
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