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.
And how do we know that the bridge is excited? We know because the bridge's giddy anthropomorphized persona on Twitter said as much:
UPDATE: 21 May, 2011
Mission accomplished!!
PHOTOS: Baybridgeinfo and Telstar Logistics
Don't anthropomorphize civil engineering artifacts. They hate that.
Posted by: Baylink | 04 June 2011 at 06:05 PM