June 1996
Now, on the 24th of June, the eastern end-house is finished, the welding machine is in place, and the rail where the tube will be hung from is installed and adjusted. We have built a "wooden hut" with a shelf inside which takes up to 6 pieces of the 4.5 m tube sections for short term storing capacity. The trench is ready and covered with corrugated sheet metal. The welding of the tube will (hopefully) begin within a week or two.
The ramming of the second trench is nearly completed.
There are only about 100 m left. We are currently checking the
vacuum properties of a 75 cm test section
taken out of the manufacturing process. The first results look
promising.
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| View into the central station (from the entrance). You can see the beginning of the south-north trench (left side of the picture), and the west-east trench (right side). | The eastern end house with the wooden hut. Michaela is just taking spectra of the seismic motion inside the end house. | Inside the eastern end house. The red part (to keep people off from here) is the separate foundation where the tank will be placed upon. From here the tube will lead 600 m to the central station. | ||
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| Inside the eastern end house. You can see the welding machine (red) with a short test segment of tube in front of the port in the wall leading to the trench (with the black seal to keep the building dust tight when welding the tube) and another tube section to see whether everything fits together. During the welding process the building will be slightly pressurized to prevent dust entering the building. An air lock allows to enter the building. | Sir Harald on his horse ('wild fiesta blue'), ready to fight the black knight... | Installing the rail, where the tube will be hung at. Each rail segment has a length of 12 m. | ||
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| On a hot summer day (temperatures are above 30°C), the rail for the west- east trench is going to be installed. From the left to the right you see: Mathias, Michael, Hans, Andreas, and Dirk. The electrical drill is mounted on a trailer behind an old tractor. A generator is placed on the pickup seen on the left hand side. |
Hans in the trench, installing the rail, which is hung each 3 m from the reinforcement beams between the panels. The wheels sitting atop the reinforcement beams allow thermal expansion of the rail, which is bolted together at the joints and therefore acts as one long rail. The thermal expansion between winter and summer of the whole rail is expected to be roughly 60 cm. |
Hans and Benno working in the trench. |
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| READY! You can see a part of the roof that will cover the trench. Attached to the rail you can see the trolley for pushing the tube out of the end house. The black wheel connected to the trolley takes the rope where the tube will rest in. That way the whole tube can be rotated around it's axis. In the trench on the right hand side you see the power supply cable running to the central station. |
And now it's ... (from left to right: Benno, Michael, Hans, Andreas (back), Mathias, Mia, Jeannie) |
... teatime. (from left to right: Mathias, Michaela, Michael, Andreas, Hans, Benno) |
