
Workers bought sugar from supermarket to slow cement flood on Victoria Line - raphar
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/workers-bought-sugar-from-supermarket-to-slow-cement-flood-farce-on-victoria-line-9081168.html?origin=internalSearch
======
a3n
Apparently sugar in cement is a thing:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sugar+concrete](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sugar+concrete)

Sugar retards the setting process. Of course people who work with concrete
would know this.

I think we've just been given a glimpse into the lore and practices of a
foreign profession.

~~~
melloclello
I remember my dad telling me about working on a site where the homeowners had
decided they wanted a brown concrete driveway to match the house - and
subsequently used a large amount of brown sugar to colourise their cement. It
never set.

------
dasil003
I took the tube instead of cycling that day and was kicking myself because I
so rarely take the tube. When I saw the pictures I thought 10 to 1 they don't
have it open by morning, but they did. They deserve credit for getting it
cleaned up (or at least operational) in < 14 hours.

------
Zenst
For those like myself wondering why sugar was used and how it helped this
situation then I found this URL most enlightening:-

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-
news/10594718/Why...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-
news/10594718/Why-sugar-helped-remove-Victoria-Line-concrete-flood.html)

"Concrete is made using cement, which is a combination of crushed and heated
limestone, clay and gypsum; aggregate, such as gravel and sand; and water.
Adding water causes a chemical reaction called hydration, where hydrogen from
the water combines with calcium, sulphate, aluminium and silicon from the
cement. This releases heat and depending on the proportions of each of these
minerals, which hydrate at different rates, can set at varying speeds. Sugar,
however, is composed of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen atoms which can interfere
with the hydration process by binding with the minerals and slow down the
reaction."

------
davidgerard
The best bit of this is that the story of the cement flood was broken by viral
clickbait site UsVsTh3m (a commercial thing from the people who run b3ta).
They actually scooped everyone, and everyone used their photos.

[http://usvsth3m.com/post/74285062011/you-wont-believe-why-
th...](http://usvsth3m.com/post/74285062011/you-wont-believe-why-the-victoria-
line-is-currently)

(My loved one used to work for the Tube. She says those photos would have been
the actual incident report photos.)

------
ChuckMcM
That is pretty intense. I am not sure how you would know that your forms were
going to leak that badly, but if you're pumping concrete from the street above
its going to be under a lot of pressure when it gets down to the bottom.

If they hadn't caught it (and I assume it was actually a flood alarm that went
off in the cabinet) you would have been faced with carving the equipment out
of a solid block of concrete and _that_ would have been bloody expensive and
slow.

------
tlrobinson
_" TfL today came under fire for initially informing commuters the line
closure was due to “flooding”"_

Technically they weren't lying, they just didn't say what material was doing
the flooding.

~~~
chris_wot
"That is partly the truth, which is the same as a lie by omission." \- Jean
Luc Picard

------
hyp0
> The only word for it is a f∗∗∗ up of major proportions. Everyone was f-ing
> and blinding when they realised what had happened.

It's certainly more fuck up than farce, but what does what does "f-ing" and
"blinding" mean? (Australian here)

But the key issue - in everything - is not whether you make mistakes, but
whether you fix them. This one was fixed.

~~~
chris_wot
Exactly what part of Australia do you live in? F-ing is a very common phrase
here.

~~~
vacri
'Fucking' is, but softening it to 'effing' isn't, and 'blinding' is archaic,
mostly used as an intensifying word rather than on it's own ('he was in a
blinding hurry'). More likely to use 'bloody'.

~~~
chris_wot
I hear it all the time. I live in Sydney.

~~~
vacri
Weird, I've never really heard it except in the context of someone trying to
sanitise their language, such as when kids are around.

Then again, there are some weird regionalisms out there. I once met a pair of
sandgropers that said "type of" where other people would say "sort of". They
were siblings, so it may have even been family-specific. Haven't heard it
elsewhere.

~~~
chris_wot
I was just interested. But there you go, regional dialects. I have no idea
what a "sand groper" is!

~~~
fian
A sand groper is a small insect: <p>
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandgroper_%28insect%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandgroper_%28insect%29)
<p> A "sand groper" is also slang for a Western Australian. As a "sand
groper", I have never heard anyone use "type of" instead of "sort of" so I'm
going to guess it was family specific.

~~~
chris_wot
I know what a sand grower is, just never heard the slang :-)

------
jspiros
I'd imagine this works similarly to how a slice of bread in a bag of cookies
keeps the cookies chewy, as the sugar attracts and holds the water from the
bread, and keeps the cookies from drying out. Something to do with sugar being
hygroscopic.

~~~
vxNsr
And now I know how to keep my cookies chewy, thank you jspiros.

------
kens
What technology are they using for signaling? From the photos, it looks like a
bunch of relays connected with a bunch of red wires, but it must be more
advanced than that.

~~~
objclxt
Indeed it is - the Victoria Line uses ATO (automatic train operation), so
nearly all of the train operation is automated. The system has been running
since the 60s, you can read more about it here:

[http://www.trainweb.org/tubeprune/Victoria%20Line%20ATO.htm](http://www.trainweb.org/tubeprune/Victoria%20Line%20ATO.htm)

------
shangxiao
_" It's stupid more than anything. I guess stupidity has ruled the day here."_

Gotta love people weighing in with their expert opinion.

------
ukandy
Luckily it wasn't racks of digital gear with fans.

I can imagine someone thinking they had underestimated the quantity of cement
needed as it drained into this room.

------
gog
Wow, I had Ghostery paused and this web site loaded over 50 resources that
would otherwise be blocked.

109 JS files clocking over 3MB.

------
judk
I don't understand Mike White's and Boris Watch's jokes.

~~~
DanBC
London Underground lines have names. One of them is the Circle line. They are
shown on the map in colours.

"Blue circle" is a brand of cement.

It's a week joke kludging these things together.

------
gfodor
would have loved to be in the room when they realized what had happened

------
sifarat
That's enough humans. Robots! come over.

------
raverbashing
The real question is how they just went pouring cement there without regards
for what was in there.

~~~
Anderkent
They were pumping it into an escalator void and apparently it burst through
into the room.

