ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[ac3r]

Now dinner on a beam… that might be fun!

Modern workers regularly recreate the famous Lunch atop a skyscraper photograph! It must be a fun thing to do. Of course they're all harnessed in these days (rightfully so). I'm not afraid of heights but when I'm up on a building for work, it's still a bit nerve-wracking when you look down and realize you're hundreds of feet in the air. Psychologically it's a totally different experience than being inside a completed building on the 50th floor, as opposed to standing on the top of something still under construction. You know you can't fall (well, you'd hope) but looking down you're still like "yikes".

It seems that back in those days, people got quite a rush from doing ridiculously dangerous tasks on skyscrapers. Fine dining, sword fights, performative dance and just dangling on cranes and cables. These days you'd be fired and probably charged haha. You usually can't even hold a tool when you're that high up unless it's strapped to you, since obviously you don't want it to fall on someone's head. Back then nobody cared, you could just sit on a beam with your lunchbox, a thermos with tea and take a break. Wasn't even that long ago it was still acceptable to not use any safety measures. Fred Dibnah was a famous steeplejack who also got into demolishing old chimneys. This is a fascinating short clip of him knocking down a huge chimney at an old mill, all by hand, brick by brick. No harness...nothing. He'd climb the ladders (which he installed himself, section by section and were only attached with some rope) with a sledgehammer and just wack bricks apart while standing on wooden planks that were held in by nothing by a few spikes he hammered into the bricks and tied with rope. A total different breed of man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKPApAsJbj4

Some fascinating images: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...dings.html

Don't mean to hijack the thread, I just find the old days fascinating.