I was quite surprised the other day to find that workmen had sealed off Proyer's Path and the shortcut to the Northwick Park and St. Mark's Hospitals the other day -- in order dismantle the two unsightly smokestacks next to the Harrow campus. Hooray!
I strongly suspect they were, at one time, used for burning biohazardous waste or some such, so all the more reason to be happy to see them go, although they haven't been in use since at least some time before I moved in here. Anyway, the one chimney stack that's being dismantled right now is actually a metal tube of sorts wrapped around three separate, but equally ugly, pipes, full of rust and filth and dirt and death. So the workers are cutting open sections with oxyacetylene torches, then the crane lifts the section off; from there they remove the inner pipes (though how that is accomplished I haven't seen yet). I suspect they just knock it over, since little is salvageable. Not sure how they'll tackle the other stack; it looks like it's made of brick, and they may need to just knock it over or implode it. More later.
Below are a couple of "before" shots. In the first one you can see them starting to lift the outer steel section off the core; in the second shot it's been completely removed and is about to be set down on the ground, exposing the pipes underneath.
I'll post the "after" shots after the thing has been fully demolished.
No comments:
Post a Comment