Starving pensioners

[Jonno]

Just how skinny were the Hatton Garden OAPs

I thought the holes they drilled were much larger.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I think the news program last night said only two of them went through that hole. It concentrated mainly on their age, and how one of them was incontinent and another had to remember to take his diabeties medication with him or he would have collapsed and been left inside.

[whisky-dave]

I heard that tis demo wall was had reinforced conrete with metal bars in it which the bank wall didn't. Years ago they would have got kids crawlinmg through small holes I guess all the kids now are too fat.

[Chris J Dixon]

The only confined spaces I have been inside in my working life are 500 MW alternators.

At Eggborough you climb into the spaces normally occupied by the vertical cooling water coils, and that isn't too bad. You then worm your way between bulkheads to get where you need to be. The hand lamp I had been given was just a mains fitting with reflector, so there I was, making my way around the stator end-windings and cooling water tubes, when there was a fizz and the light went out. There I was, in intimate contact with lots of earthed metal, not sure if I was about to be fried. Luckily, the problem was intermittent, and I lived to tell the tale (literally, obviously).

At Fiddlers Ferry, the technique was to stand on the alternator main bearing, facing an access panel. This was just about wide enough for me, so a no-go area for any more portly staff. The internal excursions were rather more tricky, with not a lot of room to get around. You had to exit feet first, feeling for the bearing housing before you could climb down again.

Chris

[Huge]

Makes my flesh creep just reading your posting! And I'm not especially claustrophobic. Fortunately, I'm way too porky to do stuff like that.

[Chris J Dixon]

I'm not really keen on it, and don't even like watching film of cavers. OTOH, my brother is involved with Sub Brit, and does this sort of thing recreationally.

Chris

[ARW]

You could not get a chavs wedding ring trough that hole:-)

[stuart noble]

What about the poor sods who built the water ring main round London? Well, not poor because ISTR they got well paid and didn't stay down there for long

[Chris French]

Well, there would be no reason to plan on getting caught. But they do appear to have thought about the consequences, hence no weapons being carried (other wise it would have been robbery and a higher sentence).

But they did make errors that led to them getting caught.

I'd like to know how they got the key and the codes for the door though? Social engineering I guess?

[newshound]

I heard that tis demo wall was had reinforced conrete with metal bars in it which the bank wall didn't. Years ago they would have got kids crawlinmg through small holes I guess all the kids now are too fat.

I had a few colleagues who did all the interesting confined spaces stuff. One of them was asked to look at a corroded and leaking cast iron bulkhead in a CW pump-house. When he arrived, there were about eight other guys there getting dressed up in day-glo waterproofs, helmets, and all manner of climbing ropes and shackles. When he asked what they were doing, he was told they were the rescue team. The thing he was inspecting was about 20 feet below sea-level, even at low tide.

The thing he didn't like was heights. I clambered over a fair number of gantry cranes because of that.

[Huge]

[snippage]

I have a friend who's a tower crane driver. He has some amusing (and terrifying) stories.