my little town .... something wicked this way comes? .... no. 4 .... whatever the hell it is, it is going to haul something heavy ....

after a pretty good start doing honest labor i ended up sort of a scallywag, practicing law for 25 years until ill health drove me from the business.   my youngest brother also ended up in a questionable trade, pushing stocks & bonds for merryl lynch, still.

but, my two older brothers followed honorable employment their whole lives in the heavy construction trades, operating heavy equipment and tugging on wrenches for local 701, operating engineers, out of portland, oregon.   the oldest worked on the terminus of the alaska pipeline, and did field mechanic's stuff in the aleutian islands.

he is used to big equipment, and the use of cranes and heavy stuff to move big equipment around, having operated his fair share of each.

caption:  this is a trailer full of stuff.   what the "stuff" is, i am not too sure, but, whatever it is, it is going to end up hauling something very heavy.    that much i know, but, as to the rest of it, i am, quite frankly, just a bit curious.

on the trailer, there are four sets of "trucks," (for lack of a better term.)  each truck consists of two axles, with each axle having two very squat and very substantial tires on the end.   the axles are joined by a very heavy duty round beam, which you can see most clearly on the front truck, the front set of axle of which tilts down off of the platform on which is it riding.

this morning i showed the above picture to my heavy construction worker brother, now retired, and asked him what the whole mess above was, and what was it for?

i said, "what the heck is that."

he said, "beats me, i never saw anything like that, but, whatever it is, it sure looks like it was built to haul something very heavy around.  i expect they team all those axles up, and that they are steerable somehow, ... ."    but, other than that, he had nothing definitive to say about it.

now, this brother worked for years for peter kiewit construction company, doing field repair on heavy machinery all over the west coast of the united states.   he worked summer just about everywhere, and the winters he spent at kiewit's shops in portland, oregon refurbishing and repairing all sorts of heavy machinery.  he's taken more than one diesel engine out of a heavy chassis, repaired & rebuilt it, and put it back in.

he was an instructor at the union's school, teaching machine operation and things that mechanics do.

he had no idea what the machinery pictured above is all about.

all he said was,"whatever those things are, they are gonna haul something heavy."

we'll just have to see.

john jay @ 10.30.2013

p.s.   if anyone knows what these gizmo's are for, and how they go together, please don't be bashful, and come forward and inform the rest of us.  it has got me bambozzled.   plain and simple.

Comments

[Ironhead]

Google the phone #

[john jay]

ironhead:

laughing.

didn't notice it, but, i've got you covered it.

"housemovers," essentially. look at the post immediately following, where one mystery is solved, yet another one emerges.

john jay

[Mt Top Patriot]

I've witnessed two uses for those bogeies. Moving a building. Jack up your structure with crib blocks and H beams, slide your bogies under the beams and cribbing, drop it all down, hook up truck tractor's or dozers, and your off to the races. The 2nd use I've been involved with is over road transport of very heavy cargo, like very high voltage step down transformers. The ability to attach the bogie sets like a train, lets you steer around tight turns, and spreads out your weight so bridges and such can be crossed. I'd say with the 12 inches of concrete slabs you noted, something real heavy is slated for the new building. One of those nifty small game camera's, with infered option discreetly placed would afford 24/7 entelagense.
Just saying.

[Mt Top Patriot]

PS,
12 inches of concrete is what bee52 required for a full load of gas and ordnanse. Super high precision measuring devices like CMM machines require very thick slabs, super big metal cutting and forming machines like horizontal lathes and forging hammers, so do high capacity roots blower compressors, diesel and turbine engines used to generate mega-wattage, and other like machinery to absorb vibration.

That help?

[john jay]

mt. top patriot:

you were absolutely correct on your assessment of the use of the trucks, and how it would be done.

i went back to the site this morning, and found the trucks being unloaded by a crane, and taken over to the shed, where preparations for moving it were happening, just as you have described.

pictures at the post following this one.

as to your "p.s.," i didn't know that b-52's used that much of a slab. i knew about the machine tools needing a very steady base, and about generators and the like. forging hammers and the roots blowers thing do not surprise me in the least.

generators especially need things to be true, plumb and stable, if anyone expects them to turn out good quality sparks, e.g., amplitude, wave length and things being synchronous, and all that.

thanks for a most informative comment.

john jay

p.s. yes, it helped. laughing.

[Mt Top Patriot]

I think the H model buff's can take off with 65,000lbs internal fuel, and up to 110 500lb unguided munitions if external stores are used.

Some of the early air deliverable hydrogen fusion passengers weighed around 100 grand.

Hey maybe they going to park a buff in that shed!

Anything is possible.
I mean, who can tell these things?

Our government and the press lie so much Liberty and the truth is an orphan.

[john jay]

mt top patriot:

still laughing.

could they get just a single wing out of the rain in that little shed?

joh