39 years on the roads

[mossie]

When my son was home at Christmas we unearthed some old slides which I had taken at odd times during my working life.

Some time ago I wrote about my time in the RAF, now a bit of boasting about my blacktop career. About the fourth job I had on leaving the RAF was with a small public works contractor who did mostly small blacktop surfacing jobs. They had just purchased an asphalt plant, for the benefit of Americans, asphalt in Britain is used to refer to what you call blacktop, we call asphalt, bitumen. Here is another plant built later for the same firm



This plant was in bits and had to be totally rebuilt and I gradually became involved while being put in charge of odd jobs. Once it became operational I then had some bit of responsibility in supervising the laying of the materials produced, using a machine known as a “paver”, of which this is typical.



Note how we were obliged to keep this country road open to traffic

Here is a further stage in the process with a “chipping machine” behind the paver, applying precoated chippings to the surface of the freshly laid asphalt. These are subsequently rolled in to give a texture to enable tyres to maintain a grip in wet weather.



Here is the chipper being loaded with chips, note how the tractor has to run in the live traffic lane with the normal road traffic. Not popular on busy roads. Safety rules have stopped this procedure nowadays but it was regular accepted practice.



Here is how it was done



Back at the plant of course all sorts of problems could arise, the mechanical parts operated in very hostile conditions. Drying and heating wet aggregate to 170-180C, while blowing off considerable quantities of very abrasive stone and sand dust does not mix with meatls and moving parts. Constant repair and maintenance is needed to prevent unnecesary breakdowns which could create havoc on site.

Here is my plant foreman replacing the ducting for the dust extraction system



He was also handy with the welding equipment, and often used the acetylene cutting lance on recalcitrant bolts. As a joke if somebody was making comments or over supervising him, he would pick up a bolthead he had just cut and hand it over. Of course it will still be red hot and the recipient would swiftly drop it, to which Charlie would say “Heavy, ain't it?”



This is the burner on a plant capable of producing 90 tons per hour of mixed material. The last plant I operated I converted to using waste oil, which the boffins thought was the best means of disposal as the residual nasties in the oil would be deposited on the aggregate and lost in the road. A lot of this waste oil was from engine sumps etc which contained variuos odd metals from bearings.



This is one of the plants which came under my control at some stage.

[htmb]

Fascinating, Mossie, and great pictures as well. I'm looking forward to more.

[Deleted]

This gives a completely new meaning to the idea of "on the road."

[tod2]

Great stuff Mossie!! I am looking forward to more because it is a 'blast from the past'

[bjd]

Working with traffic on the road using alternate circulation is still done in France. The main street where I live was being worked on for nearly 2 years -- replacing sewer pipes, burying electric lines -- the usual digging holes and filling them up and digging a new one a hundred metres further along.

They have pretty much finished finally but it was a real mess for months. Since it's a main entrance towards the university, the hospital and the southeastern side of the city, the alternating traffic and road being cut in half (already only 2 lanes) was a real pleasure for commuters.

Did you used to start at 7am too?

[mossie]

Work at the road site would normally start at 07.30, but in busy situations we would have to work "Restricted Hours", which meant we could not obstruct the road before 09.30 and clear the site by 16.00.

Restricting traffic to alternate way working under temporary traffic signals still happens, but a safety margin has to be maintained between the traffic and the workers. I had instances of men being injured by passing traffic which is not a good experience.

I ran jobs on the M1 motorway which had to be carried out mainly at night but at least we had a clear lane between us and the traffic. However I do remember an instance about 2.00am one morning, when a lorry driver dozed off and ran into our lane. He was only halted by his wheels sinking into the freshly laid asphalt and he stopped only feet away from the machine.

But the asphalt plant was always my main concern as a breakdown there stopped work often at the most inopportune time. Here is the dryer drum of a plant which prior to my taking responsibility for it, had been grossly abused. the operator was trying to push more material through than it was designed for and overheated everything into the bargain. Mild steel doesn't begin to deform like this until the temperature is in excess of about 500C.



Here are a pair of meshing gears which have stripped due to lack of care and maintenance, they carry a very heavy load as they drove two eccentric shafts to vibrate the screens which graded the aggregates after they were heated



Here is the best weighbridge clerk I ever had, she needed to be tough because in those days it was most definitely a mans world



Note the crane is an "Iron Fairy", here lifting into place the ducting I showed in the first part of this thread



I also had to get in a big crane to replace the bucket and chain hot elevator, which was used to raise the heated aggregate to the top of the plant



The chain of buckets is laid out ready for lifting here



Here is one of my road foremen. His tee shirt says "The Jolly Sailor", but he looks far from jolly here, it was quite a tough job and because I was on site he was perhaps waiting for my comments.

[bjd]

It's striking that nobody is wearing overalls or a helmet. I'm always amused when a politician goes to see a construction site and wears a hardhat as though he was in danger of being hit with something.

[Deleted]

All of these photos are amazingly professional and could easily illustrate a magazine article about roadwork. Did you take these photos just for your personal "amusement" or did you have an idea that they might be useful at some time in the future?

[mich64]

It must have been enjoyable spending time with your son going through your photos. I find urban planning very interesting and through the years I have noticed improvements in how they can get the job done while still keeping the traffic moving safely for all concerned. It took about 20 years but they have finally completed a four lane highway from my city to Toronto. For years they would close down sections and bring the traffic back to two lanes so they could work full time on the new sections and it quickly reminded you why the separated highways are so much better.

[htmb]

Jan 17, 2014 20:53:23 GMT kerouac2 said:

All of these photos are amazingly professional and could easily illustrate a magazine article about roadwork. Did you take these photos just for your personal "amusement" or did you have an idea that they might be useful at some time in the future?

I completely agree. Your photographs are excellent, Mossie.

I thought about this thread earlier this afternoon when the two lane highway I was taking was narrowed down to one lane to cross the bridge at the Santa Fe River. The Road Department people were performing minor repairs and painting the sides of the bridge. They had the eastbound late completely blocked and vehicles were crossing the bridge in shifts. However, the stupid rednecks "gentlemen" controlling the heavy traffic, which was composed about 50% of big, heavy dump trucks, were not doing a great job in my opinion and allowed eastbound traffic to travel to just within a few meters of my stopped, westbound car before moving them back into their lane. For about 5 minutes I considered how a head on collision might feel.

[questa]

Hello Mossie.
I am posting this in your honour and also for all the road builders.
I was living in a small, dirt track village in Lombok, Indonesia. At one point 3 roads met, and great was the dust and mud here.
The elders called in the professional road builders who laid a long Y-junction, bitumen strip.

First a layer of rubble

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Then it was rolled down…

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The bitumen was being heated in drums over a trench filled with a hot fire assisted by an LPG blaster

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Each drum had 2 square holes near the top so a pole could be inserted through and the whole drum lifted off the fire and carried by 2 workers to where it was needed.

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Using a long pole with an old 6 or 4 litre paint can firmly attached, the men ladled out the hot mix and poured it onto the rubble.

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Gradually it took shape. I was amazed by the footwear…some of the men only wore rubber flip flops on the boiling mix.
After the bitumen came a layer of fine stones and dirt, which was swept by hand.

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We were told not to have vehicles on it for a few days, but the cows and horses used it.

PS. Photos scanned from old film prints.

[Deleted]

It's always so interesting to get a glimpse of how it used to be. I wonder about the safety standards in those days, mossie? I imagine it would have been a completely different kettle of fish. No hard hats?

[mossie]

Yes, we are back in the "good old days". Some was good, some was bad and some was downright dangerous, but that was how we liked it. Questa's shots show the real old fashioned "grouted macadam" from which sprang tarmacadam, then hot rolled asphalt, or asphaltic concrete in American and commonly called "blacktop". Nowadays generally called coated stone, because the coating is generally bitumen, which is the heavy fraction of crude oil. Other exotic chemicals are also used and often a mixture of both.

Elfin Safety came to the fore in the 1980's, I remember being given a great sheaf of closely typed A4 and being told. "Peter, you had better read this because its all going to apply to you". When I did wade through it I felt like resigning on the spot I told my people " The day is coming when the first thing we do on getting out of bed is to put on a foot thick suit of cotton wool". All the men were supposed to wear helmets even when working on a completely open site with nothing taller than a traffic cone in sight. When they bent forward to apply themselves to their work, the wretched helmet slipped forward over their eyes. It was at once discarded and much complaining ensued. So it took much patient explaining and modification before we reached the situation which applies today. I am so glad I ceased to be actively in charge on the job in 1993 and retired completely in 1997. I used to hurl most paperwork straight into the waste bin and would never have survived in today's world of papering over ones backside and vast "risk assessments", just to step out into the road.

I have raked out some more old photos which I will have to keep until tomorrow.

[Deleted]

My first thought when Deyana evoked hard hats, even though I expected them to turn out to be obligatory now, was "what on earth for?" When you are working on ground level with nothing above you, there is not much that a hard hat can do other than perhaps protect you if you stumble. And probably if you are prone to stumbling, this is not the sort of job you should be doing if you don't like falling into hot tar.

Anxiously awaiting the new photos!

[htmb]

Mossie, you would have been furious with me if you'd worked on the dirt road near my house that my father had petitioned hard to get added to the list for paving. The section of graded road was about 2 miles long. The whole thing was paved all at once and then barricaded to cars while the surface cured. However, it wasn't barricaded to young girls riding horses.

[questa]

First 2 verses of a favourite poem by G.K.Chesterton. Being someone who travels, I find roads are important to me. Nice crazy roads, not dead straight super highways.

[mossie]

Since you ask, these photos were generally taken for my own amusement and to show family and friends. Later in life I was occasionally asked to give talks to my contemporaries and also for in-company training, and so some came in useful then.

As for young ladies making tracks, I particularly remember two foremen who could be relied on to find an accomodating young lady in the locality, within a few days of arriving on site. I can remember visiting a site and asking for the foreman to be told, "Ah, you see sorr, he's off to find a phone", I understood the code after a while. On another occasion a foreman arrived on site one morning to find a car parked right where the machine had to go. Normal practice, knock on doors of adjacent houses, to be answered at one by a young lady appearing dressed only in a tee shirt. Which was too short.

Now here are some more shots from the beginning of my blacktop career.
This is the first asphalt plant we got going, note how it leaks dust and steam from every joint, would never pass today's environmental standards.



Here is what eventually replaced it, my directors had ordered it from the manufacturer and I had the job of integrating it into my little empire



Asphalt being laid on a local trunk road. This dates before the machine for applying precoated chippings was developed, note the little heaps laid out ready along the verge. This meant that they were applied sparingly which tended to defeat the object, hence development of the machine.



Note that steam and dust was not confined to the mixing plant, asphalt should be 160C when laid, and if the surface is at all wet much steam is made.



In this shot the glare is the setting sun, we are just starting a night job on the motorway, always tense as I would set very ambitious targets but had to be certain of opening the road to traffic by 6.00am. Did I say that I could never perform without being under stress.



This is also from a motorway job, where we had to remove old asphalt and replace it, again to the 6.00am deadline. One could never be sure what depth of old asphalt there was so quick calculations and adjustments to the plant programme were required. This of course was before the days of mobile (cell) phones, so it meant running back and forth between plant and site. I remember doing a job one night about 7 miles from the plant and clocking up 150 miles.



I shall have to have a rest, Photobucket is hard work. I also need my lunch so will rake up a few more some other time.

[mossie]

Thanks for reminding me of the poem. For years my lunch was taken in pubs, it made the work easier.

[lola]

This is a fascinating essay, mossie. The chain of buckets one is amazing.

And love yours, too, questa! Thanks to you both for posting.

[bixaorellana]

Absolutely fascinating! Roads -- we've seen them & driven on them our whole lives, but I know I've given very little thought to how they get there & how they're maintained.

Some of my comments echo those of others, i.e., the dear gone days of devil-may-care safety standards, but also the sad disappearance of each worker taking pride in knowing more than he had to -- of being able to fill in or trouble shoot outside of the immediate job description. Mossie, I imagine you could step into any job on the line from the bottom up & work it.

You already answered about why the pictures were taken, but I was wondering if they weren't also a sort of Captain's Log for you -- both to record work & to cover yourself and your crew against any future problems or complaints.

Questa, what a great addition to the thread, showing what went before even though still used in modern times.

[Deleted]

And I'm wondering if you were forbidden by standards of decency from taking pictures of the scenes at the pub after working hours.

[htmb]

More like prevented for fear of a beating by the other patrons who valued their privacy.

And Mossie, just to be clear, as a young girl in my early teen years there was certainly no fraternization with the road workers. All we left when traveling that freshly paved road were two miles of horse hoof prints.

[mossie]

Dealing with various comments, I would say firstly to Kerouac that I think in most occupations, ones best work is done in the pub. To be serious for a moment, if I had a particularly difficult job to plan I would retire to a cafe where no one could find me and get the thing on paper over a couple of cups of tea. Luckily well pre mobile phone days, although if I had one then it would have been switched off.

To Bixa, you compliment me too much, the photos were taken just for me. I have never seriously considered covering up or justifying. I always believe in just getting stuck in and doing the best one can, if anyone has any criticisms then they had better take over and do better. Time and tide wait for no man, as the saying has it.

To htmb, I'm pleased to see you are a well brought up young lady who will have no truck with nasty common road workers. At this time we had a daughter who was not in the best of health and the county council paid for her place in a small private girls school to save her from the hurly burly of the normal school. Of course all the other girls had wealthy parents and were very snobby, these girls were about 11 years old. My wife took it in turns to drive our daughter and a couple of others to school and so hobnobbed with the other mothers. My daughter did not know what I did and the others were curious, so I told her to tell them that I was a roadman and went to work with my trousers tied up with string. This caused a flutter in the dovecotes but one of the other mothers roughly knew what I did and told the rest "He's something high up in Wimpey" Wimpey was a well known construction company.

Here is another facet of asphalt production, this plant has three storage bins able to hold a total of 360 tons of mixed asphalt.



The asphalt is dropped from the mixer into this travelling skip which is pulled up the incline and the material then dropped into the bin 1 and a half tons at a time



By this means the plant could continue mixing later in the day and store material ready for a flying start in the morning. Also daily production could be smoothed by mixing to the bins while waiting for lorries to return from a job and also so that changes from one mix to another, which took time, could be reduced. Imagine mixing asphalt is like making cakes, each type has a fixed set of ingredients so the mixing equipment has to be cleaned out when changing from one type to another.

I was very relieved when computers came in as my plant was called upon to mix more the 20 different mixes and calculating prices on analysis paper was a very laborious process which a spreadsheet made short work of. I spent several happy? hours learning Lotus 123 by trial and error, not to mention the swearing and thumping the keyboard.

[htmb]

Mossie, I can understanding getting away to a pub for concentrated work. There is one colleague in particular I work with who is even busier than I at work, with constant interruptions. Though we do leave our cell phones on in case of emergency, when we need to focus on a project and plan our strategy we head to one of the local cafés not likely to be frequented by others from our office. It's often the only way to be able to get things done. I would imagine, being literally out on the road, the local pub was the easiest place for your temporary office. What was the typical size of your crew?

[Deleted]

I remember a Newsweek article from a number of years ago that marvelled about the quality of French roads compared to American roads in terms of durability. The main point of the article was to say something along the line of American bids for the lowest bidder only had to cover quality for 5 years. French roads are also awarded to the lowest bidder, but it is demanded that the roads last for 10 years. Obviously the French roads are therefore of greater quality but also more expensive to build, even though they are still cheaper than having to completely repave the roads every 5 years.

What is the situation in Great Britain about road quality?

[tetsyd]

The road system in the UK is (like most other situations other than the affairs of the PM / President) worse in the UK than in France. Of course there is nothing to compare with the marvellous autoroutes even though the UK has had a limited motorway system since 1959. The physical condition of the motorways is generally good but they are badly overcrowded, particularly on the M6 at "Spaghetti Junction" near Birmingham. This got so bad a few years ago that a separate route (M6 toll) was built to avoid the junction. Last time I used this it was £5 for a private car which I thought was good value.

Even in France you are probably aware that the British government is proposing a high-speed rail system (HS2) which is also highly controversial. My own opinion - a third world country does not merit (nor can afford) a first-world rail system.

[mossie]

Our roads have a nominal design life of 20 years, but some maintenance is envisaged to the top surface. Unfortunately maintenance comes out of annual budgets and in times of austerity budgets are cut and maintenance is one of the easy things that can be swung over till next year, or done on the cheap.
In addition the specification is at the mercy of civil servants. There are some excellent engineers in public office, but in general they have too much education and not enough practical experience, ditto our politicians, and the infrastructure suffers from the "Not invented here" syndrome. In other words, unless it is their idea, it is no good.

Another problem is the buzzword "outsourcing", where projects are handed over to big business where the well paid civil servants are floundering. Great rip-offs ensue as the wool is pulled over bureaucrats eyes big time. Computerisation is a prime example and there has been instance upon instance of £multi-million projects having to be abandoned as impractical. To compound the folly the project then is handed over totally to the outsourcers who can then charge an even greater price.

My, how we've strayed from my original simple career, but, as I tell my young son "get out now, while you can, this country has had it".

[Deleted]

Your career was not simple. It was vital.

[Deleted]

Fascinating and interesting Mossie.
Thank you for taking the time to put this together.
Likewise Questa for your contribution.

[bjd]

as I tell my young son "get out now, while you can, this country has had it".

Things don't change so much in England then. That's how my parents felt in 1957 when they decided to leave England for Canada.