I didn't see it mentioned there, so I have to ask: what about the cabling? Depending on where the telephone cables entered the building, they would have to get up to 12 meters longer. How did they make that work? Did they splice every cable? Or did the cables already have enough slack?
A 1700-ton telco building that was relocated while running in 1950
11–20 of 51 posts
Re: A 1700-ton telco building that was relocated while running in 1950
#12I'm surprised that they don't move more buildings - I guess it is fabulously expensive. When I was a child I remember that one local building was moved to allow a road to be widened (http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem...). I've never heard of a UK building being moved since.
Re: A 1700-ton telco building that was relocated while running in 1950
#13I didn't see it mentioned there, so I have to ask: what about the cabling? Depending on where the telephone cables entered the building, they would have to get up to 12 meters longer. How did they make that work? Did they splice every cable? Or did the cables already have enough slack?
[deleted]
Re: A 1700-ton telco building that was relocated while running in 1950
#14I'm surprised that they don't move more buildings - I guess it is fabulously expensive. When I was a child I remember that one local building was moved to allow a road to be widened ( http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem... ). I've never heard of a UK building being moved since.
There used to be a show in the US about moving houses - generally they were wooden houses and moved a mile or so to either a new part of town or another town. I think the huge wide (and pretty empty looking) roads helped - I can't think of many cases where you'd be able to do similar in the UK due to the narrow roads.
Plus I'd rather move a wooden house than a brick or even a stone one.
Re: A 1700-ton telco building that was relocated while running in 1950
#15I didn't see it mentioned there, so I have to ask: what about the cabling? Depending on where the telephone cables entered the building, they would have to get up to 12 meters longer. How did they make that work? Did they splice every cable? Or did the cables already have enough slack?
This was my first thought, but I assume that they tackled this issue when they lifted the building, since keeping telephone service running during the process seems to have been the primary goal of the project. Perhaps once the building was up, they did whatever they needed to do to extend the cables.
Re: A 1700-ton telco building that was relocated while running in 1950
#16I'm surprised that they don't move more buildings - I guess it is fabulously expensive. When I was a child I remember that one local building was moved to allow a road to be widened ( http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem... ). I've never heard of a UK building being moved since.
Here's an even more wild example - the city of Chicago was too low to the water, causing sanitation problems. So they moved the whole city, one building at a time... about six feet straight up. With the technology of 1850-65. While most of the buildings in question were in use.
Re: A 1700-ton telco building that was relocated while running in 1950
#17Zero-downtime deployments 1950s style.
Re: A 1700-ton telco building that was relocated while running in 1950
#18I'm surprised that they don't move more buildings - I guess it is fabulously expensive. When I was a child I remember that one local building was moved to allow a road to be widened ( http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem... ). I've never heard of a UK building being moved since.
Here's an even more wild example - the city of Chicago was too low to the water, causing sanitation problems. So they moved the whole city, one building at a time... about six feet straight up . With the technology of 1850-65. While most of the buildings in question were in use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
Infrastructure projects of old fascinate me. I can't imagine this being done today. Same with things like the El, NYC subways, and the Eisenhower interstate system: the amount of overhead these projects would encounter (for both better and worse) would be prohibitive.
Re: A 1700-ton telco building that was relocated while running in 1950
#19I'm surprised that they don't move more buildings - I guess it is fabulously expensive. When I was a child I remember that one local building was moved to allow a road to be widened ( http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem... ). I've never heard of a UK building being moved since.
In the 70's a 7000-ton building was moved in Bogotá using steel rollers. It was cheaper to move than to demolish and rebuild. http://www.colombia.co/en/trade-with-colombia/innovation/cud...
Re: A 1700-ton telco building that was relocated while running in 1950
#20Impressive feat - however, I was puzzled by this: > Naturally, some of the workers were nervous about this idea. Matute Remus was sympathetic to their concerns, and wanted to reassure these operators and make them feel safe. So his wife Esmeralda agreed to also go into the building while it was being moved. She even took along their seven-year-old son, Juan Jorge. Maybe this could work as a publicity stunt to persuad…
See also the UK's minister of agriculture trying to feed his four-year-old daughter a beefburger during the mad cow disease era:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/16/news...