Life on the High Lines

This what I have been doing on the Transmission lines lately.  On Oct 26th a large wind storm blew through the Chicago area knocking down 60 95-100ft wood poles and bringing down close to 3.5 miles of wire in Sandwich IL, a small farming community west of Chicago.  40 plus lineman spent the next 25 days making it safe for the public and restoring the line.  When all was done, 120 poles were handled, and over 50 miles of wire was cleaned up or replaced.  It was the largest project ever done by the transmission department.  Here is how I spent the last 25 days.
                                           First there was material to be ordered and delivered.
                                          In this picture is the first of over 80,000 ft of wire.

We had all kinds of equipment, 6 dozers including 2 D8 dozers, and 2 track dumps as in this picture.  We also had multiple bobcats, 4 cranes, 4 105ft trucks, 2 125ft trucks, 6 digger derrick trucks, 8 crew trucks and much more.  

 Our first task was to clean up the broken poles and pull the old pole butts out of the ground

 This is the crew truck that I got to drive most of the time.  They hold most of our tools, clothes etc.  We practically live out of these trucks.   They are 4 door, seat 5 and are 4x4 with a huge winch!  Trying to talk Bernice into getting one for traveling but she hasn't bought into that idea yet. 

 Here we are securing the rest of the line so that the sheer wight of the wire does not bring the rest of it down, kind of like a domino effect.  This was a tricky operation.

 Here we a framing new poles so that they could be set. We are drilling the holes for the arms, they have to be very straight and true because both arms share the same bolts. 

 After they are framed we set them in the ground.  We have use a crane because of the height and because they weigh 11,000-13,000lbs.

 Here we are setting a steel pole.  They come in two pieces. They were set every 11 poles so that if this line goes down again hopefully the domino effect will stop at a steel pole.  We will see if they work.

 Here is the last way we set some poles.  With an air crane.  The helicopter set 20 poles as a test run for future jobs to see how efficient it would be.  It did set 20 poles in 2 hours which is pretty good.  I have more pictures saved  for a later post.

 After the poles are all set it was time to pull in the new wire.  The wire is quiet heavy and is pulled in under 2,000lbs of tension.  This required a very complicated pulling set up.  We use a steel cable to pull the wire in, but to get the steel cable through a mile of rollers on the pole requires a rope to pull the cable in.  So we basically had to pull a heavy rope by hand and pickup to the steel cable truck.  Then pull the cable in with the rope, then use the cable to pull the wire in.  Really have to think ahead on this part to avoid working yourself into a corner.

 Finally sagged the whole 3.5 miles to tension (around 2,500lbs) and now removing the rollers and permanently attaching the wire to the insulators.  This shot is from the crane operators seat.  The wire weighed almost 400lbs at each pole, thus the need for the crane.

 Here are some odds and ends.  In this photo, retrieving something from 14ft deep, hole. :)

 Nice Rainbow at the end of the day.  The weather was perfect!   In 3 1/2 weeks we only had a few hours of rain, otherwise is was 50's-60's and sunny every day. 

                                                                       Have a nice day