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"Mysterious" Infrastructure Objects

uair01

uair01

Antediluvian
Joined
Apr 12, 2005
Messages
5,461
Location
The Netherlands
I'm always fascinated by those infrastructure boxes out in the landscape (or the city) that seem to have some mysterious purpose that I can't fathom. An example:

Silent box in the snow
Same box, different location

Now this one is (unfortunately) easily explained, it's an "air quality measuring station". But nevertheless, I find these objects stimulating, especially if they have a red light, that's sometimes on and sometimes off.

Do you have more examples of "my favorite mysterious infrastructure box"?
 
There used to be a large one in Skelmersdale, where I grew up. Apparently it was the entrance to an army supply dump that was closed sometime in the fifties and could be seen from the main road going past, but not many people actually noticed it. There was rumours that there were still landrovers and ammunition still down there, which was probably an UL shared amongst schoolkids. There was also a large doorway under a playing field, best way I can describe it was that the field was on some kind of platform. The doorway, also long fallen out of use, was apparently an oil repository during world war two, but it could easily have fitted a tank through it.
 
What else is weird, is a small square building in the countryside, middle of nowhere, with a spinning satellite dish ontop. What the?
 
Human_84 said:
... a small square building in the countryside, middle of nowhere, with a spinning satellite dish ontop.
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Oh! I forgot - I have written a short monograph on this subject (to quote Sherlock Holmes). It's about a radar station out in the fields: http://www.xs4all.nl/~kazil/radar.html

===============

And we have an unmarked building near the station, no logo, no name on the fence. But a large fence and lots of CCTV camera's with infrared beamers. A permanent watchman in the hall (also at night). It's not in any directory that I know of.

I taked about it with my son. And the schoolkids know about it too. It's rumoured that the FBI is housed in the building. (That can't be, this is in the Netherlands.)
 
There's a dome, apparently largely buried in the Earth, near the Lanner to Redruth road (Cornwall). I assume this is connected with the field of radio aerials nearby.

The 1:250 000 OS map calls this a 'WT Sta' (Wireless Telegraphy station - WT is used for Morse code transmissions). But there don't appear to be any explanatory signs around, so I like to speculate about what is really going on there. 8)

Is it a secret military establishment? But surely they'd put up some innocuous but misleading sign - "Acme Radio Co. Atmospheric Research Station", or somesuch?

Or is it an underground UFO hanger?

Does the very small reservoir nearby have any significance, or is it just for Farmer Penberthy's potatoes?

One day I must get of the bus there and have a look around. Perhaps MP or even MIB will warn me off! :shock:
 
rynner said:
Is it a secret military establishment? But surely they'd put up some innocuous but misleading sign - "Acme Radio Co. Atmospheric Research Station", or somesuch?
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Nah, they're far more likely to put up a sign saying 'Top Secret Military Base' or whatever. Some of these things are clearly marked as such, it's true!
 
There's a beauty in Birmingham city centre, a small, rather old looking concrete box with a dirty old ventilator grill in one side. It sits in a tiny grassed area, a kind of miniature 'green' at the intersection of Queensway and some other big roads (I think, I'm not a native).

It is, believe it or not, one of the very few visible signs of the Anchor Complex, the gigantic Cold War comms centre buried beneath Birmingham. It's real, honest! Look it up online. There's another one in Manchester called Guardian, which is still in use by BT and is absolutely gigantic. Again, small boxes or oddly outdated WARNING notices give away the still active nature of these installations.

There was a thread here somewhere about them at one point. The scale of the developments are astonishing. But to bring it all back to the original point, all that you see on the surface are small utility boxes...
 
Mythopoeika said:
rynner said:
Is it a secret military establishment? But surely they'd put up some innocuous but misleading sign - "Acme Radio Co. Atmospheric Research Station", or somesuch?
Click to expand...

Nah, they're far more likely to put up a sign saying 'Top Secret Military Base' or whatever. Some of these things are clearly marked as such, it's true!
Click to expand...

Secret%20Nuclear%20Bunker.jpg


That's Kelvedon Nuclear Bunker, which to be fair is now a tourist attraction. I don't think it was labelled like that when it was still in use.
It's included in a new book from the creators of the Framley Examiner, 'Bollocks to Alton Towers: Uncommonly British Days Out'. I also recommend that anyone interested in this kind of thing track down a copy of Mark Thomas' Secret Map of Britain, in which he does his usual trick of using perfectly legal methods to expose dirty secrets, in this case stuff like hidden oil pipelines, cover-ups of nuclear accidents and networks of underground tunnels. Fascinating stuff. It was available as a torrent on www.uknova.com a while back and if it's not there any longer some friendly person will reseed if you ask nicely.
 
Most of the stuff that you see on the horizon that looks out of place is there for a reason. Much of our nuclear protection was sold out after the Major government took power in 1992, but it's still there. If it looks dodgy, it probably is ;)

As for foreign powers listening on your shores (uair01 take note), it happens all the time. The CIA is not allowed to listen in or take action against US citizens, so, suprise, suprise, the UK has a listening post not too far outside of Langley, VA. King Khaled Military City (KKMC) in Kuwait is a Kuwaiti facility, but guess who supplied the equipment...

And why do you think that PGP encryption was classified as a weapon by our esteemed brothers over the pond?

BB is watching - Emmanuel Goldstein needs supporters!
 
THere's a huge cylindrical structure at my university next to the library. I have absolutely no idea what it's for. (But I suspect it has something to do with pigeons.)

Nobody else seems to know, though admittedly the people I've asked have been, for the most part, students as well...
 
Probably for Doves - look inside and see if there are a load of little holes....

If you don't get that far, then it's probably aliens.... They like their privacy :-(
 
Interesting... Was it the Guardian's network of tunnels that made it into the news last year when most of the phone lines in Manchester went down for a couple of days? I seem to remember local news reports elaborating about how engineers had to go underground and solve the problem in an underground network.

A deep level tunnel system runs east and west from Guardian. A mile-long (1.3km) tunnel runs west to Salford, and a thousand-yard (700m) tunnel runs to Lockton Close in Ardwick, where a modernised ventilator building marks the south-eastern extension of the Manchester deep level tunnels.
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When I was growing up in Salford I used to play in a wild overgrown area that ran parallel to the railway lines near to Hope Hospital (known as either the "Backies" or the "Lockies" to the local youth). The M602 Motorway is there now, but I recall a couple of oversized manhole type covers hidden amongst the undergrowth, one of which was unsecured, and lifting the lid and looking down just presented a set of metal rungs leading down into the darkness. If memory serves there were no municipal or water/gas/electric/phone company markings on the cover which led to speculation as to where the shaft led to.
 
I've always been fascinated with the hydro stations disguised as ordinary houses. They're unassumingly nestled in the neighborhood and don't stand out at all, except that the curtains are always closed and no one picks up the junk mail, and that you can actually see a lot of wires and whatnot coming out of the roof and in the back. I don't know if they have them everywhere, but they had them where I grew up and they kind of creeped me out a little.
 
Ill have to keep my eyes open for anything like this. Im sure Ive seen lots but none springs to mind.

Which is odd because I am normaly observant and tend to tresspass. (though I would obey any blatantly official notices.)
 
Somewhere by the side of the M42 motorway, just north of Tamworth, there is a small brick building, presumably a substation or control shack of some sort. It is completely boxed in by fencing and what looks like razor wire, but amusingly, when glimpsed briefly, it resembles a semi-detatched house. This leads one to endless speculation about the terrible events that would have led to such a domicile being screened off in such a way; presumably, this is how the house in Ghostwatch finished up.

Well, it's quite a boring drive. I have to amuse myself somehow.
 
In a farmers field near Thorngumbald, East Yorkshire, there is a man hole cover slightly raised up, which when I was younger a couple of friends showed it to me.

When you climb down into it, which we did, at the bottom of the ladder theres another manhole which is blocked off. Behind you there is an old bust up toilet!! and to the right of you there is what I can only assume is a shell of what used to be a Kitchen I say that cause you can tell where the cupboards used to be because of the old paintwork. :?

I've seen these raised manhole covers in fields before but only assumed they were for water mains etc as the other ones i'd seen were near an old pumping station. But this one was no where near anything like that. I've not had the bottle to try climbing into any more though just to check though.

On another note, if any of you live in Hull you may recall what I'm talking about. There is a new solicitors building next door to Queens Gardens,(queens Gardens used to be an old dock) were the sols is now there used to be a carpark.

Now what I'm getting at is when they came to build this they took the top off the car park. Underneath the carpark you could clearly see that the hole underneath went down a hell of a long way, it had lovely smooth and 'clean' sides with stairs running up the sides with doors at intervals along its depth. I remember being able to see so far into this and look at the workmen going up and down these stairs and one went in to the door about (i'm guessing) half way down this hole. Thing is this would of taken him underneath Queen Gardens at maybe 15 metres or more deep. I still think this was bizarre, and I was surprised that no one esle seemed to be paying it much attention. :)
 
I’m so glad someone has brought this up – I love stuff like this..


razorblimp said:
There used to be a large one in Skelmersdale, where I grew up.
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FAO: razorblimp
Whereabouts in Skelmersdale is the army supply dump that’s visible from the road, and also for that matter the oil repository under the playing field? (I live very near to Skelmersdale myself and would love to check them out..)

Also, close to where I live is a very mysterious telecommunications site – it’s been shrouded in secrecy for as long as I can remember; no signs around the site, nobody ever seen entering or exiting the buildings, that sort of thing..

Locals have variously stated that it was/is some form of nuclear early warning site, some centre to monitor and track our movements, etc.

After a quick trawl on the web I found that it was once used by The Home Office to listen for illicit clandestine radio transmissions from Eire, where enemy agents were operating from 1938 to 1944, so it does have at least a partly shady history..

More recently the site has been sold to NTL and was previously used by the Home Office Directorate of Telecommunications (DTELS) to provide wireless support for the emergency services.

Despite this seemingly innocent explanation, many locals are still convinced it is a cover for nefarious governmental activities..

Info here:

http://www.dtels.org/index.html
http://www.dtels.org/html/lancashire.html
http://www.dtels.org/html/billinge.html
 
JayneJayne said:
In a farmers field near Thorngumbald, East Yorkshire, there is a man hole cover slightly raised up, which when I was younger a couple of friends showed it to me.

When you climb down into it, which we did, at the bottom of the ladder theres another manhole which is blocked off. Behind you there is an old bust up toilet!! and to the right of you there is what I can only assume is a shell of what used to be a Kitchen I say that cause you can tell where the cupboards used to be because of the old paintwork. :?
Click to expand...

Could this be a Royal Observer Corps bunker?
 
We passed a very odd-looking building on the moors the other day. It's between Haworth and Hebden Bridge, pretty isolated, and has high wire fences surrounding it.

A large sign says it's there to measure the size of raindrops, amongst other innocuous things. Though why that entails so many satellite dishes being around the place is anyone's guess!
I'll post a pic in a day or two...

And what's the twin-masted thing in the middle of Ilkley Moor all about? It's got a great view of the American base at Menwith Hill :D

(Oh bugger, I wrote Menwith Hill... there'll be funny noises on my telephone now :p )
 
Odd building

I'm sure there's a simple explanation, but I came across this very strange looking building whilst on a lunch-time drive some time ago. Sorry about the dark photograph - it was a horrible day. In the main, it looks like an electrical substation or something, but it also appears to have one of George Adamski's Venusian Scoutcraft emerging from the roof. Maybe I've stumbled across British Rail's long abandoned "Skunkworks".

A year or so ago, before it was boarded up, I had a peek inside. Apart from broken glass, it contained little but the remains of old-looking electrical panels - nothing that gave me much of a clue to the building's purpose. The dome on the roof is what really puzzles me, though.

Anyone have any ideas? This is how it appears from above on Google. My photo was taken from the South-East.
 
It looks to me like an observatory without a telescope... not that i think it is!! :? :lol:

It also looks like several different architects have been contracted to design it... each bringing their own special style to the building.
 
The domed part looks like an octogon building. I didn't notice frost on the roof, tho.

What're all the yellow stickers in the "windows"? Are those radiation warnings?

Where is this place? Oddly enough, it looks familiar.
 
Now that you've started the subject of odd buildings I'll add one of my own.

I pass it on my way to work and I've often wondered what's inside. This one is in use. It has no nameplate, no logo's, a tourniquet and a watchman sitting there all day and night. It also has quite impressive security camera's.

A school mate of my son said that the urban legend says it's used by the FBI :D

Pictures here:

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/mystbuilding02.jpg
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/mystbuilding03.jpg
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/mystbuilding01.jpg
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/mystbuilding04.jpg
 
uair01 said:
Now that you've started the subject of odd buildings I'll add one of my own.

I pass it on my way to work and I've often wondered what's inside. This one is in use. It has no nameplate, no logo's, a tourniquet and a watchman sitting there all day and night. It also has quite impressive security camera's.
Click to expand...

A tourniquet? So somebody had been bleeding...?
 
Somewhat OT:

I believe we have an "occult architecture" thread somewhere on the board.

Looks sorta like George Van Tassel's Integratron from my vantage point. (Hey, they have a pool!)
 
uair: very curious :? The interior looks as if it could be offices of somekind, however the lack of detail (company logos, signs, etc) outside is very strange...

... and definitely raises my suspicions :shock:
 
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