A while ago there was a story about one Moscow city street advertisement agency.
What made them famous? Their attempt to install a new street ad stand, so they had to hammer in a concrete pile into ground. They started doing this and suddenly the pile came down through ground layer and disappeared somewhere down there.
Yes, they were shocked but they had a task to accomplish so they started to smash in another pile – it also broke in through the ground. Now they got really puzzled.
So where have their piles gone? They gone right into a subway train, nailed a full of people subway train moving at 40mph (70kmh) down to the ground – right in the middle of the working day. They got extremely lucky that the subway car in which they hammered in a pile was almost empty and nobody got seriously injured.
This is how the metro car looked after the incindent.
And that’s those two piles. After the first one hit the car, the train was stopped, and the second one followed making another hole in the car’s roof.
That’s one of those holes.
And this is the view of this car in general. A layer of sand, dust and concrete crumb covers the floor and even falls out from the car through the opened door.
Goodness! I’m glad nobody was hurt. I’ll bet that those workers were really puzzled to see the pilings disappear.
Yes, they got extremely lucky. Everybody knows that the Moscow metro is extremely overcrowded at almost all times of the day. Had this happened at another time, a bunch of metro passengers would have died and the drillers would have been sent to the koloniya.
Interestingly, there was an incident in 1995 in St Pete where a subway tunnel on the red line got flooded during a construction accident and it took them nine years to rebuild it.
It seems that after the first pile dissappeared in such a fashion, that the work crew would have figured things out and not attempted the second pile. Were they drinking on the job?
[...] English Russia reports in picturesque but readily understandable English: [...]
I’d say ages ago, rather than “a while”.
[...] When you’re hammering a concrete piling into the ground and it slides out of view and disappears, just remember: it had to go somewhere. Thus, don’t grab a second one and start over until you find out what happened to the first, since for all you know it could have slammed into a subway train below you. [...]
looks like you are not a great expert in mining and underground construction. The catastrophe in leningrad subway happened in soviet time in 1974. heaving sands need constant freezing, not once in 50 years.
ok, first off I am GLAD that nobody was seriously hurt, but…civil engineering at its finest there lol it really dosent matter what country, something bad is going to happen lol.
3 days and several rolls of duct tape and card board later, the train was back in service
Now, that’s what you call a bad case of piles…
[...] nbspnbspRussian Business Calendar nbspnbspBiggest Russian Chair nbspnbspOld Russian AdsnbspnbspAd Placement nbspnbspDisposable Glasses Go Fences nbspnbspPolice Special DevicenbspnbspRussian IT Calendar Styled to Soviet Posters nbspnbspRussian Economic Crisis Calendar nbspnbspSubway Incindent [...]
[...] See more of English Russia: nbspnbspTravelling To The Past nbspnbspThe Bunker for Stalin nbspnbspSubway Incindent [...]
All in favour of the gaffer tape remark, having been involved in some hairy transport moments abroad