Helper lineset?

[BillConnerFASTC]

Back in early 80's when I had just started theatre consulting, Bill Taylor of TRS (which was absorbed by SECOA iirc) told of a all from an army base. They had a theatre with wire guide and apparently every year someone adjusted theguide wires - tightened. Lock rail was on a gallery. Bill walked in and saw the lock rail along with the slab it was anchored to hanging over the remaining gallery.

 

[Ted jones]

Back in early 80's when I had just started theatre consulting, Bill Taylor of TRS (which was absorbed by SECOA iirc) told of a all from an army base. They had a theatre with wire guide and apparently every year someone adjusted theguide wires - tightened. Lock rail was on a gallery. Bill walked in and saw the lock rail along with the slab it was anchored to hanging over the remaining gallery.

Similar thing. In both cases, the system was wire guided. The concrete that we anchored the rails to was oatmeal and the tension of the wire guides pulled the rail anchors out of the floor. Its a little disconcerting to find the rail dangling from the wire guides. Both incidents happened within months of each other in 1979. One was Star Plaza in Merrillville, IN and the was Truman College in Chicago. Star plaza has been torn down and the system at Truman is currently chained up due to other issues.

Star Plaza was also the place where the supporting columns for the loading bridge were VE'd out of the job as someone in the construction company couldn't understand why a "service catwalk" needed all that capacity. As we were loading the bridge with counterweight the first time, it started to cut through the CMU walls that were holding it up. Stupidly, we started unloading the bridge rather than getting off of it and letting it fall.

T