This is geeky, but for San Franciscans or visiting tourists, it's also way cool. There is a new, live data feed available via San Francisco's NextBus and Market Street Railway that offers a realtime visualization of which vintage streetcars are operating on the F Line, and where exactly they are along the route.
The map is even animated, so it's basically like having a dashboard for San Francisco's vintage streetcar fleet. In fact, here's a photo of the new map in actual use inside the Telstar Logistics Mission Control facility:
For normal civilians, the new map means if you want to go streetcar-spotting (it happens), you can efficiently collect the whole set. Even better, the map works like a charm on the iPhone. Bookmark!
Harried parents will love it when their precocious children say, "But, but... I want to ride on a GREEN ONE!!" (Been there.) Railfans will know if they can hop on one of the rare super-bonus streetcars, and where they'll want to be when to make that happen.
Sorry for the recent spate of NASA-related items, but with the imminent retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet, we really should enjoy all this while we still can.
In that vein, NASA has released a superb video that affords an amazing, up-close perspective on the amazing, improbable structure that our species built to serve as a semi-permanent habitat in outer space. The footage was captured a team of astronauts as they undocked from the International Space Station on May 23, and one commenter on NASA's website put it, "Kubrick would have been proud."
So true! Of course, on some level, we'd expected the whole shebang to look a bit more like this:
Nevertheless, the detail on the real thing is mighty impressive. Let's zoom in (click to embiggen):
Serious wow.
So let's not quibble about the visual aesthetics. Here and now, NASA's wonderful original video did not include a soundtrack, so Telstar Logistics remixed it with the appropriately Kubric-esque "Blue Danube" and uploaded the whole thing to YouTube for your viewing pleasure.
For a time during the 1970s, Los Angeles operated a small fleet of public buses to carry beach-crazed kids from the distant valleys of San Fernando and Pasadena to the cowabunga sands of Santa Monica. The Los Angeles Transportation Library website tells it:
Back in 1974, June got off to a very splashy start for the Southern California Rapid Transit District.
The RTD launched its summer “Street Fleet on four new bus lines (605, 606, 607 and 608) to carry people from different parts of Los Angeles County to Santa Monica.
The motorcoaches were specially decorated to look like submarines, painted battleship gray along with bright blue waves to create the appearance of churning through the ocean as they rolled down the street.
The fleet was even decked out with conning towers on top to replicate housing of periscopes to reinforce the nautical theme.
The June 18 issue of the RTD employee newsmagazine Headway described the service as “four summer ‘life preservers’ to kids who live in the inland areas of Los Angeles County, running seven days a week for the “93-day summer beach season.”
Line 605 picked up its “crew members” throughout the San Fernando Valley, Line 606 served Pasadena and Altadena, Line 607 departed from East Los Angeles, and Line 608 carried riders from Compton and Watts.
Note also: Surfboards were permitted on the bus!
This promotional video from 1974 really clinches the package. Sing along:
A few weeks ago, during a "self-guided" tour of the waterfront in Oakland, California, Telstar Logistics wandered into headquarters for the new Bay Bridge construction project. Amid all the piles of construction materiel, one object stood out: A huge casting fitted with cable guides that was clearly intended to top-off the the bridge's new suspension tower.
Properly speaking, it's called the "cable saddle," and today it will be installed in its permanent home atop the summit of the new tower:
TREASURE ISLAND (KGO) -- A final piece of the massive new Bay Bridge tower is being put into place Thursday. Crews will be working 500 feet above the water on a project that is so enormous it will make history.
The 960,000 pound cable saddle will carry the bridge's nearly mile long single looped cable over the top of the tower. The cable saddle is the largest in the world. Caltrans crews held a dress rehearsal last month for the project.
Exciting stuff, particularly for the Bay Bridge itself.
Inevitably, there comes a time in every parent's life when they are called upon by their progeny to explain the fundamentals of containerized transportation. For Telstar Logistics, that moment arrived about a week ago, when our junior executive (now age 3.75) asked about all the big metal boxes she's noticed aboard many of the big ships that sail in and out of San Francisco Bay.
Since it was Saturday, and we had nothing else planned, we piled into the fleet vehicle for a trip across the Bay, to the Port of Oakland, to watch the operation of a major container terminal first-hand. It was a very successful foray: We saw lots and lots of big metal boxes, of course, but also trains, and trucks, and ships, and giant cranes, and an assortment of weird machines. She enjoyed the tour, and we came away with a tidy collection of photos to show for the trip:
Telstar Logistics has always been a fan of Putzmeister. The company, based in Germany, is the world's leading manufacturer of mobile concrete pumping equipment used in the construction industry. That's very cool, but as an added bonus, the name Putzmeister is absolutely hilarious if know know a little bit of Yiddish. (We even bought a safety-orange Putzmeister t-shirt from the company's online store a few years ago.)
Schoolyard giggles aside, however, it turns out that a Putzmeister may be one of the most important pieces of equipment available to help bring Japan's Fukushima nuclear crisis under control -- both as firefighting apparatus and as a tool to build new concrete containment facilities.
Only three truck-mounted pumps in the world rise high enough to hose water on the overheating, radioactive reactors in Japan. One of them, it turns out, was in Summerville [South Carolina].
That's why sometime this week a tractor-trailer rig with 10 axles will lumber its way down Interstate 26 hauling more than 80 tons of a device that looks like a huge, folded-up steel girder. The truck is bound for Atlanta, where it will be loaded on the largest cargo plane in the world, scheduled to be flown out Saturday.
It's not the first rescue work for this pump. The devices are built to pour concrete, and this one was bought by a Georgia company to pour concrete for casks at the mixed oxide fuel plant at the Savannah River Site in Barnwell. A shorter version of the pump by the same manufacturer poured concrete for the towers of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.
The pump extends to a length more than two-thirds of a football field, but can be folded up to about the length of most tractor-trailers. The problem is the weight. At 170,000 pounds, the rig is double the weight allowed over the road without special permits. [...]
The pump is one of two that will be flown to Japan aboard Russian-made Antonov AN-225 Mriya Super Heavy Transport planes, the world's largest aircraft.
The other pump is in California. The planes were designed to transport the Russian Space Shuttle, said [Putzmeister marketing services manager Kelly Blickle]. The rigs are being moved to pump water, but if a decision is made to encase a reactor in concrete -- similar to a method used in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster -- they could do that, too, she said.
First came ineffective drops by helicopter, next was spraying from fire trucks. The situation was brought closer to control with the arrival of Hyper Rescue and Super Pump Truck from the Tokyo Fire Department, but it was an extra-large concrete pumping machine that has been most effective, particularly at unit 4 where steelwork obstructs spraying from the ground.
The machine already on-site is a Putzmeister 58, named after the length of its boom in metres, supplied to Tepco on the initiative of Hiroshi Suzuki, director of Putzmeister Japan. It is able to pump up to 120 cubic metres of seawater per hour with fairly high precision thanks to a flexible boom. In earlier phases of the Fukushima accident, the ability to control the pumps remotely was a great help in reducing radiation doses to workers.
The site will soon receive delivery of two 62 metre units that were available from a Putzmeister factory in Germany and as well as two 70 metre units from the USA.
Let's hope Japan also has some robotic firefighting equipment on hand, like the DOK-ING apparatus shown above. (Corporate slogan: "Don't send a man to do a machine's job." Amen.). The company says:
The MVF-5 is unique remote controlled fire fighting system developed to fight fires in hazardous and inaccessible areas. It is designed to help fire-fighters to do their job in the most challenging and dangerous conditions.
The MVF-5 is the third product launched by DOK-ING and was designed based on the development of the previous DOK-ING machines. The system is an example of a highly sophisticated robotic system incorporating the latest fire fighting technologies that enable users to extinguish fires with minimal personnel and vehicle damage. The remote-control system allows the user to remain outside the range of danger during operation.
The system is effective in clearing a path for traditional fire fighting vehicles in difficult terrain.
The standard operating tool mounted in front of the vehicle is a hydraulic arm and blade tool attachment which allows the system to grip and remove obstacles. The MVF-5 has a Ziegler water pump with a range of 55 m and tanks with a capacity of 1800 l of water and 600 l of foam.
The MVF-5 can effectively operate in the following locations:
One of the quirks of life along the California coast is that it can be summer almost any time of year. Summer is dry and winter is wet, but both are generally temperate, so if the meteorology lines up right, you can have a warm and sunny day that would pass for a solstice -- regardless of the actual time of year.
About 90 minutes south of San Francisco, Santa Cruz, California is home to an electrified beach boardwalk and amusement pier that would easily make any refugee from Coney Island or the Jersey Shore feel right at home. In operation since 1907, the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk has a vintage roller-coaster, a log flume, and a swing carousel. But unlike the Jersey Shore, the one in Santa Cruz doesn't have many guidos, and it's open all year-round.
Telstar Logistics visited the Santa Cruz boardwalk during a balmy earlier this month, and we snapped these shots of the recreational infrastructure along the way. The crowds are thinner this time of year, but this is what winter feels like in a place where summer never really goes away.
Telstar Logistics loves infrastructure. And if you're reading this Internet weblog, there's a good chance you're an infrastructuralist too. In a very literal way, infrastructure is the stuff that moves us, feeds us, shelters us, and allows us to live these lives that are so throoughly modern.
Document the structures of the built environment that symbolize contemporary life. Share the most impressive bridges, tunnels, airports, power plants, and other monuments to our ability to reshape and reconnect our world. This theme is a collaboration with Todd Lappin of Telstar Logistics.
Telstar Logistics will help select the most sexy photos in the collection, and the best will be included in an upcoming photo feature on Pictory. But you can't get in if you don't submit your pics. So get 'em in fast.
Photos: From top, Oakland Bay Bridge by Ian Collins, Factory in New Mexico by Tim Melideo, Above San Francisco International Airport by Telstar Logistics.
Doyle Drive is not a particularly famous street in San Francisco, but chances are that if you've ever been to the Golden Gate Bridge, you probably traveled on it -- Doyle Drive the multilane elevated freeway that rises above the former Presidio Army Base to shuttle motorists from the streets of the city to the foot of the bridge.
Built in the 1930s, at the same time as the Golden Gate Bridge, Doyle Drive is now a seismic hazard, so it is being completely rebuilt. But the new construction intersects with the pet cemetery used by U.S. personnel in the days when the Presidio was still a functioning military installation. To preserve the site, the cemetery has been fenced off and left scrupulously undisturbed while a whole world of construction chaos takes place all around it. Quite a spectacle.
In practical terms, that means 1 in 36 homes in Modesto is in foreclosure, and as we discovered, the evidence of this is visible from street level. You won’t find entire blocks of Modesto that stand vacant -- it’s not Detroit, after all -- but in on practically every steet in every neighborhood, there’s usually there’s one house that’s been foreclosed.
With some practice, foreclosed homespotting becomes easy: Amid the manicured lawns and tidy suburban blandscapes, the foreclosed homes are the ones where things are slighty awry; lawns go feral, the shades in the windows sit askew, and rows of legal notices are taped to the windows near the front door.
Although at some addresses, there's nothing subtle about the situation at all:
In other parts of town, you can see the remnants of housing developments that were started but never completed, as if the land itself is waiting for the economy to recover:
“We’re going to be near the top of the foreclosure list for a long time,” Bob Johnson from Direct Appraisals in Modesto told us. “The majority of the foreclosures here are people who used home equity loans to buy cars and other things. Banks often try to help out with loan modifications, but that doesn’t really help, so people just walk away. Bottom line is, people here say they just won’t pay mortgages that are worth more than the value of the property.”
Oddly, despite Modesto’s high rate of foreclosure, new home construction continues. At a brand-new subdivision called The Arbors at Graham Estates, workers pour concrete for new foundations, just yards away from a row of newly-completed homes. Prices here start at $230,000 for a 1600 square-foot house.
According to Tim Parish, the project superintendent for developer Frontier Community Builders, the new units are selling well, even though foreclosed houses often sell for half as much. Foreclosed homes are often plagued by mold infestation, damaged walls, and broken appliances, Parish says, so “even in a market like this, some people just don’t want a used car.”
It will be a long time before Modesto fully escapes the havoc caused by the foreclosure crisis.
“We see all kinds of properties, even homes bought in 2008.” explained Omar Perez, an appraiser with Cal Valley Appraisers. “It’s going to be like this for a few more years, and that will keep a lot of downward pressure on values. Home values will eventually climb again, but I doubt we’ll get to where we were in 2005 or 2006, even 10 years from now.”
It's a lovely little event, actually, as older railfans collaborate with well-organized coordinators and about a half-dozen kids to transform the two cars -- New Orleans No. 952 and Milan No. 1818 -- into Santa's own form of public transit. The event provides a unique opportunity for kids of all ages to experience these wonderful streetcars in a relaxed setting, and it filled us with seasonal mirth to be involved.
Pour yourself some egg nog, put some Bing Crosby on the phonograph, settle in by the fire, and watch how the magic happens:
This video of Scottish cyclist Danny MacAskill comes to us via our old friend Jordan Kobert on the Twitter, who summarized it succinctly: "If difficult takes a day, and impossible takes a week, then this kid's been working for years."
On the one hand, we'd love nothing more than to bust out a pair of rock skis and take a few untracked turns down the summit of Bernal Hill.
But on the other hand, thanks to the city's famous hills, it's a sure bet chaos would reign on the roads. As proof, we submit this video from Seattle, which shows what happened when the unprepared city was hit by a snowstorm this week. Scary!
