Open Infrastructure Map is absolutely fascinating. Check out all the power stations, turbines, electricity lines, gas, oil, water pipelines, etc near you.
Built on top of Open Street Map data (what an amazing project OSM is).
@neil I discovered what a mysterious building near me was on there. Really cool
@neil this is amazing, thanks for sharing it!
@neil
Yeah thats neat.
Waiting for the day the 450mw flywheel jumps off its bearings and leaves a trail of destruction across the country!
Actually gonna have to look for pics....
@neil
oh, its two 800 tonne flywheels that can spin at 225rpm. They got a verticle axis rather than the horizontal axis i imagined.
In the unlikely event either got free think they would bounce about somewhat randomly like an apocalyptic spinning top in a pinball machine rather than power off towards the horizon.
Guess that saves the fun deciding which direction to point it towards, that you would have, if you were building a horizontal axis flywheel that is sat in the middle of the country
@neil @ephemeral
Oh i forgot the links-
Found it via the stats button up top of the map
https://openinframap.org/stats/area/United%20Kingdom/plants/89180782
Heres a photo and some details of the flywheels
https://www.inference.org.uk/withouthotair/c26/page_198.shtml
@neil I am fascinated by manhole covers in and of themselves and also about what they reveal about the infrastructure under them.
@neil Jane Jacobs wrote a great essay on this (5 page-long).
‘Despite the almost hopeless variety, the city naturalist, keeping an eye on the letters of the covers, can tell whether he is following the course of one of the great underground rivers, whether he is on the trail of a main stream of electricity, or gas, or one of the tributaries, whether brine to chill the produce markets or steam to heat the skyscrapers is running under his feet.'
