Unique Culvert on Logging Rd
 

Our Griff "Fish" posing in front of a specially designed culvert...I watched a fully loaded tractor trailer logging truck drive over this culvert not 2 minutes before I took the picture.

Doesn't have to be circular, just pipeular.

Could be an Edvard Munch ("The Scream") engineering design culvert.

In my brief career with the DNR I don't believe I ever spec'd a culvert like that.

Art is where you find it

I was never an expert in physics. But I've always appreciated someone with the education and experience who could explain complicated things so that someone like me could understand it. So my questions are:
1. Did someone shape that mass of metal into that shape because it would be better able to support the forces thrust upon it?
2. Or did the forces of nature (frost, heat waves, flood impacts/damage) reshape the culvert and the road crews simply supported it with rock and fill to keep the road relatively level?
3. Did a cagey experienced old road construction guy, without enough budget just know how to keep using a frequently blown out and damaged massive steel culvert?
4. Did they use their practical engineering background to know that a triangular or arch-shaped piece of metal would support 80,000 lb tractor trailer?
5. Why has it not collapsed?

It's questions like these, not politics or other socially popular discussions, that cause me to pause an otherwise awesome bird hunt, take a picture and try and figure out what in heck heavy equipment operators are doing driving over something like this.

One of you metalurgist, physics experts on this forum (whom I greatly respect by the way) must have the answers...please. I estimate the height of the culvert (in it's present shape) to be 12 feet.

p.s. We're going to rename this covert based on some of the responses here such as, "The Pipeular Covert" or "The Art Where You Find It Covert", or "The Spec'ed Culvert Covert" or "The Edvard Munch Anxiety Illness and Death Covert" - all good possibilities!

Chris, the old adage of "Improvise and adapt" comes to mind.

An arch is the strongest weight-bearing structure… this falls a little short.





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Was it going from the right to the left?

“Boss, the culvert they sent us doesn’t fit!” “Quityerbitchin’ and just make it work!”

Keeping in mind that many of the 'unimproved' roads, especially from Kokadjo on up into the Allegash, belong to the Paper companies, who don't work to a particular specification. Plum Creek owns more land than the State of Maine. Pulp contractors laugh at the thought of speed limits, and weight limits are treated as mere suggestions.
Because the grade on the Rockwood Rd, coming down the west side of Moosehead is much less than the Lily Bay Rd, coming down the east side, the road condition on the west side doesn't get 'accordianed' from braking, the way the Lily Bay road is.
Repairs are done hastily, so as not to interrupt the trucks, and the compaction is constant, in the direction of the loaded trucks. That culvert will get a lot worse before it's 'fixed', unlike on state roads where endless studies have to be made. Studies, up there, consist of a couple of guys standing around, passing around a pouch of Red Man, and going 'Yup, Maybe So'.

In Michigan, DNR is "Does Nothing Right"

I just spent a week in WMD 5 that includes the east side of the Allagash and I will say that there are several new culverts up in that area.





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Unloaded from left to right. Loaded right to left. Think you're on to something...

That looks like something I made.

Chris, I hope you’re having a great time.

A friend who was an engineer of some sort for Fairchild Aircraft owned a very professional moose and fishing camp in Northern Ontario, many miles north of Sault St. Marie. On our first trip to his camp, we received a message that someone had made it from the paved road into his camp on a tractor, the first incursion in twenty years on a deserted logging road. All past incursions, (I love that word) had been made by the Algoma Central Railroad, the only way he received his clients. On our way up from Maryland, having received his message, I mentioned that if a tractor could make that 20 miles to his camp, my 1972 two wheel drive Suburban with 11.00X15 tires could make it too. I can't remember whether we had a spare, but I assume we did. The owner of the camp, my friend, told me that if I was willing to sacrifice my truck, he was up for it. Yup, we did the deed. More to come.

The pipe looks to have been an eliptical or arch at on time and rotated to give maximum strength, GARY

On the many miles trip to my friend's camp, we experienced many deep water ditches, a lost exhaust system, and faced a river crossing on a bridge formed from 12X12 inch or a bit wider timbers. Unfortunately, those timbers were spaced for the lumber trucks that used that crossing many years earlier. I pulled my Suburban up to the beginning of the "bridge" and found that my tires hung off the inside of the timbers by inches on each side. With the help of a guide walking the bridge ahead of my truck, we made it to the other side. I don't quite know what we would have done if the truck had slid off the bridge. I guess we would have walked the rest of the way to the camp and travelled back to Michigan on the Algoma Central and left the Suburban to rust in the Ontario bush. We had a week to ponder reinstalling my exhaust system as well as the return trip across the same bridge. We were hoping for dry weather for the bridge crossing. Those timbers were slippery even when dry. Oh, end of story. We made it just fine, over the bridge and back to Maryland.

Murph,

I bet the old suburban sitting on the bridge of timbers was photo worthy, any pictures we can enjoy?

It doesn’t actually cost anything to post photos :corn:

Being a retired railroader, this caught my eye & looks like an old RR tank car that might have been in a derailment and then bought cheap to use as a culvert on a back road. The thing that gives it away is the riveted construction which was the common way old tank cars were made.

Plus the fact that it’s not “corrugated”.





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Stan, our blood pressure was so high during the first bridge crossing, no one could think of pictures. Also, I was in the driver's seat and had my hands full. I do have pictures of that trip, one of the Suburban crossing a water filled deep rut in the road that almost swallowed the truck. Another is of our pilot's beautiful young daughter that he begged me to take back to Maryland so she could attend a real school. With four daughters already at home, I had to decline.

I still see a few things like that around here left over from our two tornadoes.

Very cavalier of you Bill :whistle:





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