Day 7

[aggienaut]

Was driving back down to Manhattan from the middle of Connecticut when the others called me and said they wanted to spend another day there. Eff that. So I went up through Massachussettes and then through upstate New York to Rochester, NY, instead. Visited some relatives there. Checked out the sweet ass abandoned subway system in Rochester.


abandoned subway!

Comments

[colt-4-5.livejournal.com]

its neet walking through a place that once was. When we shut the mill down, everyone was gone for a few months before I left. I ran the boilers and we kept the heat on for a few months while crews removed some equiptment. I can remember my last nightshift walking through the mill and looking at all the idoled equiptment and thinking of all the thousands of people who worked there over the last 84 years it ran. In fact, I worked the very night night shift and the day shift guys came in after me and shut the last boiler down and the mill froze leaving it almost unsalvageable.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

If the boiler shuts down the thing gets destroyed? Why's that?

Also, thats awesome working that last shift.

[colt-4-5.livejournal.com]

The boilers provided the steam for the paper machines and for the heating system for the mill. At that point the last boiler was only providing heat. It was february when we shut the last boiler down, thus shutting the heat off for the mill and being in northwestern ontario, it would have only taken 3 days for everything to freeze solid. Pipes and insturmentation would have frozen and been dammaged beyond repair. If someone wanted to restart it, it would cost millions to fix everyting back up. That last nightshift seemed like the end of an era. I didnt even change into my work cloths or have my work boots on.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Wow yeah, thats really cool.

Do you suppose the owners came in to be there for the final shutdown, or were they too rich for that kind of silliness?

[colt-4-5.livejournal.com]

One of the owners (from quebec) came to announce the shutdown in november of 2005, but as for them coming after I dont know. They werent very concerned about how the place was going to get shut down. We wanted to keep the heat on untill the spring so we could properly decommission the place so it wouldnt get dammged from freezing but they wouldnt let us. We figured if we could shut it down the right way it would be of interest to some other company, but it shows you what they thought of our jobs. In fact, here I am about a year and a half later and I still havent gotten my pension money yet! bastards.