I have heard when building the alaska pipeline if a machine such as a dozer broke through the permafrost they would run another machine over it and bury it with gravel can any one tell me is this fact or fiction and they were never recovered? thank BIG D
I was not on the pipeline, or even of a working age when it was being built, but know guys who were. Never heard of any being lost there, but not saying it did not happen. However, I know when the Alcan highway was built, more than a few never seen daylight again. I think they sank in muskegs and tundra flats. I know the perma frost is FROZEN year round. In Prudhoe bay,mid july, anywhere you dig more than 8 feet deep is frozen for the next 1800'.
Muskeg and perma frost is funny stuff. You really do not want to park a hot machine on it for more than a little while. In northern Ontario we dozed across muskeg flats to clear haul roads for skidders and log trucks. The longer they stayed open in the summer, the deeper the water and mud got. Our goldarn slasher operators would traverse them and lose the drive chains off the drive sprockets. Then we mechanics got to wade out -- up to our necks sometimes -- to stumble on the busted chains and attach a rope with a hook on it so we could drag the chains back to dry ground with our service truck. I'm here to tell you that this was a chilling experience. Of course, the slasher crew couldn't be bothered to do this themselves, they usually just slept in their crew truck till we got the chains reattached. When building I-75 across the upper penisula of Michigan back in 1961 or 62, the dirt contractor parked a couple of D9's in a swamp and the next morning they were gone. I don't believe it was perma frost however, just soft ground on the edge of a nearly bottomless lake. So far as I know, these tractors were never recovered. One of our pioneer dozer operators at Camp 603 in Ontario loved perma frost. He'd scrape up a bunch of it, put some in the toolbox on the dozer along with some moss and stick his beer in it, thus he could have cold beer all day long. Very resourceful he was.
I heard some stories of warehouses of parts etc. being burried at the end of the boom. They didn't want the stuff on the market, so dug a big hole and pushed it all in.
Stories ? I never heard or seen of any equipment being buried for good on the Trans Alaska Pipeline. Private contractors built the entire Pipeline. I worked on it from the begining 1974 to 1977 when oil started to flow. And subsequently years after, on various maintenance projects. After the construction was over, Alyeska shipped all the heavy equipment outside (Lower 48) . Smaller stuff was auctioned off locally. All the Construction Camp sites were demobilized. No warehouse full of parts or material were ever buried. Everything got trucked off. Yes, I've heard them stories, the only dumps are at Prudhoe Bay and Fairbanks. Maybe Valdez. Maybe some stuff got sent to the dump, rather than inventory and sent it to a sale or other disposition. But I'm sure was small quantities and of little value. So as to the rumors or stories , they are FALSE !
Dam and Blast!...I was counting on a bit more global warming so I could go and get some well preserved cheap iron