Sorry this is a mini-repost of a few shots because I wanted to make sure some folks would look at these and identify/confirm what these are.  :?

 

First - they are digging all through Over The Rhine to lay these new gas (?) lines...

 

 

they have 'unearthed' some street car rails (the fellow I talked to guessed 1890's) ?

 

 

 

then I looked into one of the ditches and saw these 'logs'

 

 

 

 

 

I am guessing they are ties for the rails but don't ever remember seeing them in old photos per se... 

 

Can anyone confirm?

The ties for streetcar tracks were never visible once the street was finished; ties were laid on the bare roadbed and the rails were installed, and then the paving bricks were laid so that the tops of the rails were flush with the street surface. On a street in my home town where the interurban tracks were paved over in the 1940s, the surface is taking on a washboard effect as the ties underneath decay.

very interesting

I don't know anything about that but all I can say is god knows what artifacts are burried underneath those roads and in between the walls of those 140 year old houses.

That yellow tube could house wiring.  Looks too flexiable to be a gas line.  :|

Yellow is supposed to be the universal color for gas, I'm pretty sure of that.

 

I think this is a flexible product like seen, based on the info in the sidebar/similar products, http://www.slpipe.com/pe_products/gas.htm

those are some really interesting pics.  I wish they could reuse those street car lines for one going from otr to the riverfront. 

rob_1412 - Thanks!  that makes sense now.  Those guys probably hadn't seen the light of day for 100 years.   

 

atlas - a street car line would be cool - but first - A NEW INCLINE!   

 

  In the Wagner and Wright series of booklets on the streetcars of Cincinnati there are some photos of trackwork under construction, and it was extensive. Steel ties were also used at some point. Rob is right - generally the ties would not be visible under the street pavement. You can't see the ties under a modern railroad grade crossing, either.

 

    In some places the streetcars ran on private rights of way, not in a street, and the ties were visible just like any other railway. This was called "open track".

 

    I like the Barq's sign in photo 5.

 

   

That yellow tube could house wiring.  Looks too flexiable to be a gas line.  :|

The buried electrical conduit that I've seen is gray.

 

Flexible plastic material is used in a lot of low-pressure gas line installation now. It's less expensive than steel, and easier to install. Several years ago Northern Indiana Public Service Co. moved all the residential meters in my neighborhood from basements to outside locations, and in the process they replaced most of the residential gas lines with plastic.

 

Rather than trench all the way from the main to the residential meter, they used a backhoe to dig two holes, one at the connection to the main, and one at the location of the meter. Then, they attached a long bullet-shaped cylinder, slightly larger than the diameter of the gas line, to the end of the line, and put it in the hole at the main, aimed at the hole at the meter location.

 

They attached the other end of the line to an air compressor, and a weight inside the cylinder shuttled back and forth driven by the air pressure, to cause the cylinder to pound its way through the soil from one hole to the other, towing the new gas line along with it. Standing nearby, I could feel the thump-thump-thump in the ground as it worked. Across the street from my house, they did one run of about 75 feet with it. I think it took about half an hour. Local soil at that depth is mostly sandy clay and free of rocks and other sold obstructions.

That yellow tube could house wiring.  Looks too flexiable to be a gas line.  :|

The buried electrical conduit that I've seen is gray.

 

Flexible plastic material is used in a lot of low-pressure gas line installation now. It's less expensive than steel, and easier to install. Several years ago Northern Indiana Public Service Co. moved all the residential meters in my neighborhood from basements to outside locations, and in the process they replaced most of the residential gas lines with plastic.

 

Rather than trench all the way from the main to the residential meter, they used a backhoe to dig two holes, one at the connection to the main, and one at the location of the meter. Then, they attached a long bullet-shaped cylinder, slightly larger than the diameter of the gas line, to the end of the line, and put it in the hole at the main, aimed at the hole at the meter location.

 

They attached the other end of the line to an air compressor, and a weight inside the cylinder shuttled back and forth driven by the air pressure, to cause the cylinder to pound its way through the soil from one hole to the other, towing the new gas line along with it. Standing nearby, I could feel the thump-thump-thump in the ground as it worked. Across the street from my house, they did one run of about 75 feet with it. I think it took about half an hour. Local soil at that depth is mostly sandy clay and free of rocks and other sold obstructions.

 

Yes that is Gas line, CG&E.....Errr.....Cinergy.....Errr.....Duke has been replacing lots of mains all over Cincy the past few years.

 

Rob, what you are referring to is called "directional drilling" and can be only used with flexible pipe, IIRC. Gas is at lower pressure than water, since, well it is a gas. Water mains typically have to be cast iron or prestressed concrete etc. since they are under greater pressure ("bluemax"=evil).

 

They use directional drill a lot for the gas main upgrades, I guess in OTR they felt that they could't have the control with DD with all the other pipes underground so they had to open cut.

 

As far as finding anything under urban streets, I worked on a project once where a portion of the street was relocated for Miami Valley Hospital, they are excavating for a new sewer line under the existing street and found human remains. Apparantly the existing street was platted and built thru an old cemetery!

Neat.