The big machines are back!

Construction has officially started. They've blocked off the street during the day and are re-opening the ditches next to the curb for running the alternate water line. They have also started unloading the materials, including the parts for the new sewer pipe, which you can see here being carried on the tines of the bulldozer.



Now this is how you block some streets!






They parked those long flatbed trucks on either end of the block and the materials are unloaded one side at a time and laid out on the street.

I think I took pictures of this bad boy already last year, but I still find it quite impressive:


That blade (what is it officially called, I wonder) is seriously massive. The whole thing, including the housing is over ten feet long.


I remember in the Terminator when Reese is sleeping in the station wagon next to the construction site and the sound of the machines triggers a flashback to his future world where the machines are the enemies of man. The image shows the treads crushing rubble that then morphs into treads crushing human skulls. It's funny, because I quite like having these big machines parked outside my apartment. I can see the Penetrator from my window and it's like having some kind of cool, giant friend or a mechanical mammoth out on the street. I much prefer it to a street full of cars, parked nose to nose. It may just be that the difference in scale makes it more interesting.