Alaskan Pipeline

More to follow when I have better internet access...

Failure of Communication

If you saw this sign at kilometerpost 0 of the Dempster Highway:
would you expect to see the ferry at the Peel River up on skids on land?

Modern Camping Technology

I’ve been getting some complaints that I haven’t been updating my blog regularly. I’ve been camping in the Yukon. I haven’t been eaten by a bear. I just haven’t had any internet access or cell phone service. It’s almost primitive.

For those people who know me, you know I am not a camper. I really like technological advances that have led to modern comforts and conveniences. I’m a true booster for industrialization. I like things like beds and walls and central heat when it is negative 7 degrees Celsius. Turns out my dog doesn’t like camping either. Emmeline was shivering so much that I ended up sharing my sleeping bag with her. I don’t know which is stranger: sharing a sleeping bag with an English Mastiff or the fact that we were both snuggled under a toasty electric blanket.

That latter statement might give you pause considering we were “camping.” Just to be clear, we do not have an RV. We are simply driving a Ford F-250, standard stock around here. But it is a truck with character, and perhaps it is time to give it a proper introduction.

My dad started modifying the truck in anticipation of this trip. He started off with seemingly obvious and necessary modifications, such as the clamshell storage bins for our clothes, but somewhere – and I’m not entirely sure where – he crossed a line. Now, anytime we stop for a bite to eat or to fuel up, we always attract onlookers who are puzzled by some aspect of the truck.

He started with an extra gas tank. That isn’t too unusual on a truck. It’s a very smart idea when traveling long distances between gas stations in northern Canada and Alaska to have a spare 80 gallons of fuel. We can also hedge diesel prices a bit. Best price so far $0.71/liter (Alberta); worst: $1.32 (Yukon).

Then he added the sleeping platform across the back seat for my dog. Emmeline is an old dog with arthritis and the truck is high off the ground, so the steps were a good addition too.

He added two 110-pound, deep discharge, lead-acid batteries that hook into the truck’s electrical system for recharging. The batteries drive an inverter mounted under the dog’s platform with a quad receptacle. This is extremely convenient. We can charge our cell phones. I can work on my laptop while on the road. I’ve already mentioned the electric blanket. It also powers our mini-refrigerator and our satellite radio. The easy access to electricity makes me very happy.

On the trip my dad and I do want to get out and explore the wilderness a bit, but my dad has a bad heart and can’t do too much hiking. So about a year ago he bought his latest toy: a Segway. This may start pushing us over the limit to craziness, but Dad claims it as a qualifying medical expense. Most of the people we encounter haven’t seen a Segway in real life, especially one with all-terrain tires.

Dad built a special spring-loaded rack for the Segway that attaches to the trailer hitch for easy loading and unloading. Unfortunately he spring balanced the rack instead of mass balancing it. The bumpy unpaved roads have been a bit rough on the contraption, leading to idle conversation about free body diagrams and how it could be re-engineered to be better. For the record, the Segway doesn’t like the cold any better than Emmeline or I do. Its electrical system starts complaining when the temperature approaches freezing.

I can’t keep up with his 12 mph Segway, so I had to bring my bike, but bikes are commonplace along the Alaskan highway. Everyone has bike racks on the back of their SUVs. Mine is only distinguishable because it is on the second story of the truck rack. That’s right, Dad built a steel tube framed second story for the truck. Not everyone has a 2 x 2, 14-gauge square steel tubing upper deck.

The upper deck allows for two additional storage bin (one for camping equipment and one for tools). It also allows for four, half barrel beer kegs, now filled with potable water, two dedicated to cold water and two to hot water. The hot water is created by circulating the water through a braised plate, Alfa Laval heat exchanger with the truck’s coolant pump circulating radiator fluid tapped from the heater hoses through the other side of the heat exchanger. The hot water runs at approximately 70 degrees Celsius, that is, the running temperature of the engine. A design review of the system should note that significant sub-freezing temperatures were not anticipated (our water lines have been freezing at night). It’s been a very cold spring. Even the Canadians are complaining.

The water system is pressurized with compressed air coming from our 12 Volt, DC, 150 psi air compressor, reduced via a pressure regulator to standard residential pressure of 40 psi. In short, my dad built a shower.

Additional air sockets are included in the system for powering tools, such as an impact wrench if needed for an emergency tire change (good idea). The air compressor also energizes the horns (less good idea). These are not your normal horns. Purchased off of eBay, they came from a CSX locomotive. They are loud, and we have encountered numerous train enthusiasts who want a demonstration.

Finally there are the propane tanks. Is it cheating to start your camp fire with a propane torch? It definitely makes cooking easier.

Mile vs KM Smackdown

We’ve driven 3,761 miles to get to milepost 0 of the Alaskan Highway in Dawson Creek. But we’re in Canada, so it kilometerpost 0. That doesn’t really roll off your tongue. Everything along the highway is delineated by its milemarker. When Canada went metric, it led to some unit confusion. Businesses line the highway with billboards advertising the locations of their identity crisis: “Mile 54 Truck Stop. 16 km ahead”

Alberta Oil Sands

No Tourists Allowed

Why is Alberta so hostile to historians? After all, to get to this provincial site, we’ve already driven 30 km down an unpaved road unheeding the warnings of the “Winter Road Closed” sign. Do you really think this sign is going to keep us from exploring?

Bitumount is the site of the first commercial oil sands plant in Alberta. In 1927 Robert Fitzsimmons formed the International Bitumen Company and began drilling through the oil sands with the mistaken belief that he would eventually find pools of liquid oil. The following year, Dr. Karl Clark develops a method for separating bitumen from the oil sands, but it took decades of investment to develop effective oil sands mining.

Charles, an interpreter at the Oil Sands Discovery Center, told me that there are plans to restore the abandoned Bitumount site and open it to the public, but the completion is at least a decade away.

A Winter Road in Summer

My dad had seen an episode of Ice Road Truckers, and so we had to go see what the winter road looked like. Heading out of Fort McMurray, we drove towards Fort Chipewyan. The first 60 km are paved. Then you have about 20km of a nicely compacted unpaved road. Then you have the winter road, which closed in March — it’s hard to keep ice roads functioning in above freezing temperatures.

The road bed is a single lane of gravel road paired with a single land of a sand road (the natural soil of the area). The first 25 km are currently under construction with crews working to convert it to year round use. We stopped to talk to some surveyors who were out working on the Victoria Day holiday. They were restaking the shoulder. Apparently, an engineer in the head office had discovered an error after they had originally staked it and now they had to move the road over a bit.

We didn’t drive as far as we could have down the winter road. It eventually deteriorates to a sandy bog that is only passable by all-terrain vehicles. Then you hit a few rivers and a lake or two. We are betwixt and between seasons. The ice bridges have closed, but ferry operations haven’t begun to cross some of the rivers in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, hampering our plans to drive to Yellowknife and Inuvik.

Dynamic Earth

Putting some miles behind us, we arrived in Sudbury, Ontario, to explore the town’s nickel and copper mining industry. We couldn’t swing a tour of the active mining operations, but were able to simulate the experience at Dynamic Earth, a science museum focusing on the area’s geology. (www.sciencenorth.ca)

The museum has two main exhibit galleries. The lower level has a children’s activity area and an interactive station for controlling mining machinery that mimics a radio-controlled mining operation. The upper level has a permanent display of gems and minerals and room for temporary exhibits. The traveling exhibit Diamonds recently premiered in the temporary gallery. Nadia, a geologist who had worked on diamond exploration expeditions, was on hand to answer any of our questions. It was a pleasure to have someone with industry experience on the museum floor to offer explanations and anecdotes. More museums should invest in content-area specialists for their floor interpreters.

Although the exhibits are interesting, the real draw to Dynamic Earth is its simulated mine. I have toured numerous mines – both real and constructed – across Europe and North America, and I have to rank Dynamic Earth’s simulation near the top. An elevator takes you down a 65-foot cut into the rock. After donning hard hats and passing through an airlock chamber to separate the mine’s ventilation system from the museum’s, you arrive in a cut drift. The guided tour takes you through one hundred years of mining history. Beginning with a 1900s mine, it shows the evolution of mining technology, from hand tools to pneumatic hammers, to radio-controlled electric machinery.

Sudbury mines 10% of the world’s nickel, and the active mines still have at least 100 years of life in them, but the current economic outlook is grim. The local mines are laying off employees and instituting 4-6 week mandatory shut downs.

Scenic RR machine shops

Most people journey to Cass, WV, to ride the scenic railroad. Cass State Park has a virtual monopoly on Shay, gear-driven, steam locomotives that climb the 10% grade into the mountains with ease. The park opens to the public next week. Of course a “No Authorized Persons Beyond This Point” sign rarely stops the intrepid technical tourist. We nonchalantly strolled past the water tower, around the bend to the maintenance shed. Happily we found the staff working away, firing up four of the steam locomotives, and finalizing the winter maintenance in preparation for the tourist season.

Park Superintendant Dave Caplinger soon caught up with us, but instead of shooing us off, he handed us visitors passes and gave us an impromptu tour. The town of Cass developed in the early 20th century with the formation of the West Virginia Spruce Lumber Company. The saw mill employed 150 men who worked two 11-hour shifts, six days a week. Additionally, there were 1,000 loggers in various camps in the surrounding mountains. The loggers cut 10 acres a day, and five to six 11-car trains of logs arrived at the mill daily. At its peak, the mill sawed 100,000 board-feet of wood a day.

The saw mill closed in 1960, and a fire destroyed most of the buildings in 1982, but the rail line remains. Cass is an interesting undertaking for a state government. The park includes not only an operating railroad, but also the entire company town of Cass. Its full time employees include skilled workers who weld gear teeth, replace bearings, and flush the steam boilers.

The factory that time forgot

Looking for a place to stop and have lunch, we were lured off the highway by a sign for a factory tour of Masterpiece Crystal in Jane Lew, WV. (www.masterpiececrystal.com) At the end of a tiny residential street, nestled behind a senior center, stands the forlorn cinderblock building. The factory was built in the 1930s, and in many ways it appears as if modernization passed it by.

Masterpiece Crystal is the last factory in the United States to produce handmade glassware for restaurants, wineries, and other boutique outlets. Debbie gave us an impromptu tour of the facility where we watched a four man crew blow and shape wine glasses. Each shop produces approximately 1,000 pieces a day, and two different shops were operating that day.

Tours every half hour, Monday to Friday, 9:00-5:00.

No digital pictures, please

The advertisement in the back of the magazine claimed that Green Bank, WV, was home to the largest, steerable, land-based object: the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank radio telescope. (http://www.gb.nrao.edu/) With such a fantastic claim, we had to go take a look. Unfortunately, sometimes we really should plan ahead. The adjacent Science Center is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We arrived on a Tuesday. (Note they are open daily Memorial Day to Labor Day)

Although the Science Center was closed, the grounds were open, and we were able to walk a mile or so along a curving road through a field of radio telescopes of varying size and functionality. Some were clearly not in use, noting the hawks that were nesting in the dishes, but the air conditioners hummed in others, and we could only guess as to what they were mapping.

The prize of the area is the 100 meter Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Frederick Law Olmstead couldn’t have designed a better approach to the telescope. As you walk the winding path, the looming giant disappears behind the tree line and reappears at a different angle, teasing the visitor about its true size. Along the way there are single-panel displays explaining some of the research at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, as well as markers showing the relative distances of the planets from the sun – Pluto still ranks as a planet here.

Digital cameras and other personal electronics are not allowed in close proximity to the telescopes because of the interference.

2009 is International Year of Astronomy, so go out and explore your universe.

Tech Tour 2009 Officially Begins

A girl, her dad, her dog, and a really tricked out truck – it’s either a country song cliché or the beginning of a great adventure.  Let’s hope for the latter.

Tech Tour 2009 is officially underway.  The ostensible purpose of this trip is to drive the Alaskan Pipeline in preparation for a talk I am giving at the Society for the History of Technology's annual meeting in October.  Along the way we will be stopping at sites of interest to the technical tourist.

The general route begins in Richmond, Virginia, with the first planned stop in Green Bank, West Virginia.  We will then head north, crossing into Canada at Niagara Falls.  We will meander westwards across Canada before turning north up the Al-Can highway.  Hopefully we will make it to Barrow, Alaska, before heading south and returning to the lower 48.  We will head east across the mid section of the US.  Approximately 8,000 miles or so round trip.  Of course, we are lousy planners, so who knows what the trip will entail.

This blog is an experiment in expanding my research beyond the history of factory tours to include other types of industrial tourism.  I welcome your comments as I shape my manuscript, The Ultimate Vacation: Watching Other People Work, a history of factory tours in America.