Perhaps not since Bob the Builder have so many pieces of heavy construction equipment had so much to talk about. Instead of miniature, voice-overed claymation figures on a children's television show, Twitter is featuring actual tunnel-boring machines deployed at jobsites across the U.S. With some help from their human colleagues through social media, the TBMs are sharing observations about their work in real time while generating loads of followers.
In Cleveland, 1,500-ton Mackenzie (for Twitter account names, see box) regularly updates her progress in digging the three-mile Euclid Tunnel, part of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District's (NEORSD) 25-year, $3-billion combined-sewer-overflow control program. Also assigned to a CSO project, D.C. Water's Lady Bird will soon start digging a four-mile tunnel beneath the Anacostia River.