Timelapse movie of San Francisco Muni rail replacement

Ken "Blinkybugs" Murphy shot this cool timelapse video of workers in San Francisco replacing Muni rails. "It’s a strange insect-like dance, condensing nearly three days into 13 minutes."

Or, how to spend $3 million in just over 12 minutes (actually, about 3 1/2 days).

This is a time-lapse video showing the replacement of the MUNI tracks in front of my house. Demolition began on the evening of Friday, October 8, and work continued around the clock until early in the morning of Tuesday, October 12. The MUNI folks were nice enough to distribute earplugs to those of us in the immediate vicinity.

This was shot using a Canon A590, with CHDK installed (a firmware replacement for Canon cameras that enables all sorts of additional features). An image was captured approximately every 15 seconds.

Church and 30th St. San Francisco MUNI Construction (Via Todd Lappin)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

MORE: movies • Technology

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

cjp

This video is crying out for a tiltshift treatment.
BikerRay

Interesting video. I assume the orange paint at 8:58 is used to check for wheel contact at the junction points. Also, the concrete at the end must be pretty fast setting to allow trucks after only a day.
Anonymous

Oh I so don’t want to be one of those….but the tune at the beginning is Danny Elfman’s “Breakfast Machine” I once had to transcibe it and then arrange it for a Marching Band field show. Clever writing….also crazy cool video…cheers….
Anonymous

Great vid. Interesting use of “Snap track” (The actual term used by the crews, taken from the model railroad lexicon).
jimh

I liked the soundtrack- especially the use of Danny Elfman’s Pee Wee’s Big Adventure theme during the street demo phase at the beginning.
hapa

click to zoom in: http://sf.streetsblog.org/2010/10/12/eyes-on-the-street-replacing-the-rails-on-the-j-church-lin/
Anonymous

Also interesting is that they don’t seem to use any standard girder rail in the project.
- Djhopscotch
  
  Girder rail was found to fail in the channel opposite the web of the rail with high traffic and use of heavier trams. A small fissure develops leading to longitudinal cracking, ending in a head or web failure. Most transit agencies are removing it in favor of more standard rolled rail sections.
Anonymous

This is amazing. Made me take a new look at the amount of work that a city needs to stay running.
Tuneguru

very curious what that bright flare-up around 5:13 is. Some kind of controlled burn to fuse two sections of rail? Any takers?
- Djhopscotch
  
  Its a thermite-weld.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR6K90cR8Lg
  
  Used to join two rails together in CWR rail.
lbigbadbob

Awesome video.

I suspect there’s also a freakish, tangential conversation about copyright/left and music rights lurking about here somewhere.
mzed

Indeed great video.

I don’t want to hijack into a music rights discussion, but I do wish the music was attributed. That Aphex Twin cover of The Bad Plus is well chosen for this purpose.
jwb

So, not to piss on Muni’s parade here, but I was recently living in Zurich where I watched them replace a 500-meter-long section of tramway in only two days, working only 8-5 on a Saturday and Sunday. It was a real contrast to the slapdash, lackadaisical construction work we have in California.

Speaking of slapdash, the tram rails in the Zurich job were mounted on modern rail mounts, cast in concrete a foot deep, then the rail was aligned, mounted, the mounts were cast in some kind of thermoplastic, and then the road was laid on top of it, in concrete. In this video, the rails are laid down with ties, ballasted with gravel, and then the road is laid on the gravel. In other words, Muni will be replacing this trackway again in ten years while the one in Zurich will probably last 500 years.
- Djhopscotch
  
  They replaced 4 turnouts, and a diamond. This wasn’t just a tangent track with a simple spiral-curve-spiral section. That much special track work takes time to align and calibrate when it is put into place. Ballasted track is easier to remove for maintenance, direct fixated track would require a lot more demo work to get the same job done. Where you have special track work like turnouts, diamonds etc, directly fixated track isn’t normally used since it creates a hassle replace worn components since not only is the track work have to removed, the mounting anchor has to be removed and concrete re-poured. You can also put track back into service quicker since you do not have to wait for concrete to cure.
- Boba Fett Diop
  
  On the other hand, I live near Roncesvalles in Toronto. It’s taken them a good deal longer to replace the streetcar tracks. The have needed to do some additional utilities work, but other than that, no-one is sure why.
  - Quiet Noises
    
    There has to be a reason. About 3 years ago I watched them do the intersection at Dundas and McCaul in a matter of maybe 5-7 days.
- Niklas
  
  A foot deep concrete is not such a a nice foundation when you are not living on the San Andreas Fault. You have to assume some seismic activity with repair and maintenance work because as the result. Also, what Djhopscotch said.
  
  As for the video: I am always fascinated by those doing their craft and this is a wonderful example.
jyindc

This video reminds me of the cool track replacing machine from Belgium. I think this was on boing boing a while back, but if not, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFE8nmKpmXY
Atvaark

Soundtrack is awful (except Aphex Twin) but I can’t wait for that version of Sim City to be released!
Bobdotcom

One, was captivated by the hydraulics on the resting machines slowly “relaxing.” Happens several times but most notably at 37 seconds in – watch the jackhammer arm on the backhoe.

Two, love how they bring the pieces of track in already attached to the ties like the track from a giant model railroad. Could almost imagine a really large electrical transformer with a start/stop switch…
Anonymous

Something like this would have required at least three MONTHS in Italy.

(we have trams in Milano, the trams you are using in SF are from here).
Niklas

Stupid me, can’t even master basic grammar while pretending to know stuff about rail replacement and plate tectonic. The above should read “â€¦when you are livingâ€¦”.
Brainspore

This makes me want to slow down video of carpenter ants and dub in noises from heavy construction equipment.