
Reanimating Bertha, a Mechanical Behemoth Slumbering Under Seattle - aaronbrethorst
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/us/reanimating-bertha-the-mechanical-behemoth-stuck-under-seattle.html
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notauser
If you like this, then you'll really like the series currently running on the
BBC about the crossrail excavation - they have some great video of the TBMs in
operation.

[http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/the-bbc-goes-
behind...](http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/the-bbc-goes-behind-the-
scenes-for-crossrail-documentary-series)

If you are in London, you might also like the Brunel Museum which is at the
end of a tunnel under the river which was hang-dug using a human powered TBM.
You can go down into the Rotherhithe shaft which was the staging post for a
lot of the digging. The museum itself is pretty small but the guided walks are
great.

[http://www.brunel-museum.org.uk/history/the-thames-
tunnel/](http://www.brunel-museum.org.uk/history/the-thames-tunnel/)

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cromulent
This animation shows the plan for fixing it. I can see why it will cost $125m.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlPgkPo_vGQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlPgkPo_vGQ)

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icelancer
Pretty cool how a project that took 10+ years to agree on is going to make
traffic worse in the 4th most congested metropolitan area in the US and cost
2-5x as much. All around a fine bureaucratic job by everyone involved.

~~~
_delirium
Well one alternative floated was to simply to demolish the unsafe viaduct with
no replacement, as San Francisco did with the Embarcadero Freeway after the
'89 earthquake. My preferred alternative, and much cheaper! However that
wasn't a popular suggestion, probably because it would be worse for traffic
(at least in the medium-term), especially given Seattle's not-great public
transit. Another alternative is to rebuild the viaduct, which would be cheaper
than a tunnel but still very expensive, and would probably require it to be
closed in the interim anyway, because it basically needs a complete
replacement of the unsound 1950s structure, not just more reinforcement. Or,
of course, keep the viaduct as is and hope there aren't any major
earthquakes...

~~~
techsupporter
> Seattle's not-great public transit

I like Seattle's public transit. As for the tunnel, how about giving the
right-of-way to Sound Transit and let them build the Ballard/West Seattle rail
route through there? They seem to be doing quite well at digging tunnels
pretty much everywhere.

~~~
Crito
What there is of Seattle's transit is good. The problem is that coverage is
poor, it relies too heavily on buses (I'd love some more comprehensive
regional rail...) and the buses are over capacity and underfunded. Otherwise
it is sanitary (some other cities seem to have trouble keeping feces off of
everything, but Seattle does well there) and often on time.

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aligajani
It's so funny that I spend hours aligning a box 1px to the right and then
there are people doing this Bertha stuff. Man, I feel like crap now :P

~~~
notauser
Unfortunately "big engineering" is 10% fun and 90% filling out paperwork - and
with a few exceptions the paperwork part is the only bit that offers any
career progression.

Documentaries rarely bother filming the 200 guys who spend years working in
office parks on P6 plans and CAD models to plan everything to the Nth degree!

~~~
masklinn
And even the "fun" is 90% boring. The tunneling itself is maintaining the TBM
as it's doing its thing and crawling along at ~30ft/day. Seeing them in action
for 10mn is fun (I did and the scale is awe-inspiring) but I'd expect working
on them to be more on the boring side.

~~~
notacoward
Fortunately, when you're working on them you're away from the boring side. ;)

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jacobheric
I enjoyed the animations and videos of the repairs here:
[http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/About/followbertha](http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/About/followbertha)

I spotted a UFO in the repair pit video, I'm curious if someone can identify
it (upper left in the frame):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4cCmM43IYk#t=91](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4cCmM43IYk#t=91)

~~~
pgrote
It appears to be a kite.

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DanielBMarkham
“So obviously they’re doing a lot of planning and engineering work to ensure
that it will fit back in there,” he added.

Anybody that's worked with engineers had to laugh at that.

Yes, obviously they've done all the work they could possibly do. Otherwise
they would be phonies. But I'll bet there's a huge difference between how this
fine-detail work looks on paper an how it's actually going to happen.

~~~
namlem
I bet they try to fit the new bit on at least twice before they get it to work
properly.

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PhasmaFelis
How far did they get before jamming? If I recall correctly, with borers like
this, they lay the concrete tunnel sections behind it as it digs, and the
diameter of the finished tunnel is obviously smaller than that of the raw
tunnel, which means you can't back it out without demolishing all of the
tunnel sections you've already laid. The article doesn't mention any of that,
unless I missed it. Were they "lucky" enough that the breakdown came before
any concrete was laid?

~~~
maxerickson
It says that they made it 1000 feet.

In the section describing the rescue, I think they mean it is going to move
forward into the rescue shaft.

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jpdlla
For a second there I thought this had something to do with Bertha, the
tropical storm.

[http://www.weather.com/news/weather-hurricanes/tropical-
stor...](http://www.weather.com/news/weather-hurricanes/tropical-storm-
bertha-20140801)

~~~
Someone
More likely
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Krupp](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Krupp),
from there (disputed) to
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha_(howitzer)](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha_\(howitzer\)),
and from there to
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha)

~~~
mdturnerphys
Here's the official namesake:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Knight_Landes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Knight_Landes)

