Only in South America;
Difficult to describe so bear with me;
Large road, 2 lanes each way, paved central reservation with no barriers. About a 60mph limit. (Americo Vespucio, Santiago with Echinique if you wish to look it up)
Strung across the road are cables, a bit higher than you'd see telegraph poles in the Uk. Perhaps 25% more.
Man walks onto central reservation, leans wooden ladder against cables and climbs up.
Man walks into the road, stops on the white line between lanes 1 & 2, leans ladder against wires and climbs up. (traffic still running at full speed).
Man walks onto path, leans 3rd ladder against cables and climbs up.
These three guys have no other support, and the ladders are simply leaning against the wires.
Man 3 (pavement) is passed a long cable by man on ground. Holding this he threads it through a loop holding all the cables together. Then, hand over hand, he pulls his ladder sideways until its leaning at almost 45 degrees towards man 2 (in between lane 1 & 2).
At the same time man 2 leans towards him. They meet in the middle and hand over the cable.
Man 2 pulls himself, hand over hand, upright and threads cable through a loop by him. And then continues to go further over until he is leaning towards man 1 (central reservation) who is leaning towards him. They pass the cable across and the central reservation man pulls himself and his ladder upright.
The other two men grab their ladders, distribute themselves on the other carriageway and repeat to get the cable to the other side.
All of this with rush hour traffic doing 50 odd mph.
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Must have been the hi-viz ladders that kept them safe.
Was the cable live or had they been on the safety course ?
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I told you there was way too much stuff with elf an' safety here in Blighty. They're alive int they?
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>> They're alive int they?
For the time being apparently.
Frankly I would die of pure terror if I were forced (and it would have to be real force, threat of imminent death or similar) to try something like that.
I wonder if they have insurance for when they fall, break their pelvises and backs and have to spend the rest of their lives in wheelchairs?
Perhaps FMR can enlighten me.
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>>I wonder if they have insurance for when they fall.....
I doubt it.
Recently someone wanted to borrow one of the children's bouncy castles. Its a large thing with a waterfall down one side into a small pool and the more traditional slide into a "castle" the other side.
Wary of loaning such things I asked what would happen if someone got injured. Turns out, not much. Apparently nobody can sue me, even if my fault or its my faulty equipment.
Those two women who lost their legs in my accident? Both dismissed within a week from their jobs.
Its a brutal place at times.
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I suppose it's beyond them to tie a drawstring to the cable being passed through the loops and leaving it in place in case they want to feed another cable (and drawstring) through?
BT had a problem when they introduced hollow, plastic poles. They were never designed to be climbed, had no steps and weren't strong enough. They had a drawstring arrangement inside. Numpties wouldn't replace the string when feeding a new wire in.
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>> BT had a problem when they introduced hollow, plastic poles. They were never designed to
>> be climbed, had no steps and weren't strong enough. They had a drawstring arrangement inside.
>> Numpties wouldn't replace the string when feeding a new wire in.
The poles 'n oles blokes never had much in the way of brains.
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>>Was the cable live or had they been on the safety course ?
I wish I could post photographs to show you how bad.
The majority of poles here are those reinforced concrete ones. Most of them have so many cables that they far exceed their weight limits. There is no discipline and no enforced rules.
Imagine two high-rise buildings, one new. The new one is just as likely to receive its cable television feed via a cable from the other building which will be tied to a post, thrown across the street 20 floors up, and then tied to another post.
As I look out of my window, and I am in a suburb, as far as I can count there are around 50 cables on the poles running past the bottom of my garden; telephone, cable TV, street lighting, and electricity.
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These are not the poles I was talking about. These are the much smaller, less crowded poles between my townhouse and the chip shop.
I just walked along and took photos as I went.
Now, if this is a little suburban road, imagine the main roads!
www.flickr.com/photos/125140832@N05/
Last edited by: No FM2R on Fri 21 Nov 14 at 22:15
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BTW, if you look at those pictures you;ll see a street sign in one for Av. Larrain. There's a large "R" next to the street name.
Guess what that means? between 08:00 and 10:00 the direction of travel reverses on just that road. Not on cross streets which remain unchanged.
Chaos or what!!
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You only realise how few overhead cables there are in the UK when you see things like this. The only overhead cables round here are for BT. Everything else is buried.
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>> These are not the poles I was talking about. These are the much smaller, less
>> crowded poles between my townhouse and the chip shop.
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>> I just walked along and took photos as I went.
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>> Now, if this is a little suburban road, imagine the main roads!
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>> www.flickr.com/photos/125140832@N05/
Thats pretty tame compared to this
online.wsj.com/articles/SB124885874162589595
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Ah ! The Bangalore Customer Services exchange.
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>>Thats pretty tame compared to this
Tue, but you're not comparing like for like. This area is a posh / bit hippy area. No homeless or poor, quite a lot of rich connected.
Downtown it is truly horrendous.
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>>I just walked along and took photos as I went.
www.flickr.com/photos/125140832@N05/
Have you got trolley buses/trams? That looks like a pantograph supply.
Love the last pic, what's holding that lot up, a skyhook?
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If its the photo I think, then its a bunch of VTR Cable TV cables supported by a Chilectra Electricity supply cable.
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Wonderful. From our own correspondent.
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Implementing new overhead cable. - ....
