(erielack) Train and Crane

["Paul Brezicki" <doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net>]

Very interesting photo. Piles are also used to stabilize high embankments;
that may be what's happening here, although they appear to be driving it
between the tracks. The other striking thing is that spectators, including
children are standing on the ROW in the midst of the equipment; these days,
they wouldn't get within a quarter mile of the activity (which is a good
thing). The discussion also brings to mind the many thousands of piles
supporting all those piers in NY harbor and the man-hours required to drive
them. Many can still be seen poking through the surface, with nothing left
to support.

Paul B

Lynne, that's a pile driver, not a crane.  You can see the pile, the
'telephone pole' looking thing
in the vertical part of the driver.  The top of it is a little bit above the
coach.  The weight, or
hammer,  which has been pulled up close to the top of the pile driver's
vertical legs, is about 3/4
of the way up to the top.  In action, the hammer is pulled all the way up
(usually) and then allowed
to free-fall so it hits the top of the pile.  Over and over and over and
over and over again.  Yep,
noisy!  The hammer then drives the pile down into the ground.  Eventually,
it hits either rock, or
refusal based on the friction generated between the sides of the pile and
the dirt it's driven in.
Technically, the engineers would look for a "blow count" of so many blows
per foot, or inch, to
establish the bearing capacity of the individual pile.  In those days, as
far as I know, all piles
were wood trees, like you see in this picture.  Today, there are many
different kinds of piles,
concrete, steel, tapered of both varieties, stepped, and more.  Piles driven
in groups form the
basis for foundations of many very large structures, which sit on
(generally) concrete bearing caps
atop the piles.  Sometimes in the old days, the bearing caps were built of
stone.

It's not perfectly clear to me, anyway, why they are driving piles right
THERE.  Fellow Jerseyites
may know the location well enough to say that there is, as it sort of looks
like, a bridge there or
something.  Given that the structure is being placed in a fill, the
embankment the tracks are on,
they must be planning something fairly heavy.  Fills are not generally as
strong as natural "dirt"
to build something on.

SGL





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