Culebra
TOOLS USED: Photoshop for JPEG conversion and image map creation
RENDER TIME: 3 hour 45 min 23 secs
HARDWARE USED: P200, 64 mb RAM, w98
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
Canal Zone, Panama, November 16, 1906.
One of the most published of all historical photos is about to be taken.
The man in the ice cream suit is Theodore Roosevelt, "Teddy", "TR", "Bull Moose", "Rough Rider", "Trust Buster", Nobel Laureate, father of the Panama Canal, creator of many US national parks, one of the guys on Mount Rushmore, the 26th and one of the most beloved US presidents ever.
The fact that TR waded through deep mud to get aboard a greasy coal fired steam shovel, in a white suit, and even ran the machine, is typical of him.
He scheduled his visit to the Panama Canal project for November, the worst of the rainy season. He arrived in Panama a day early, and sneaked ashore to avoid the welcoming ceremonies. He went nonstop for three days. He visited hospitals, inspected kitchens, and talked to workers. When a formal banquet was scheduled, he was eating in a workers' mess hall.
The scene shows the Culebra Cut, the deepest point of excavation, although TR's steam shovel encounter actually took place outside the cut, near the Pedro Miguel lock site. I discovered this fact too late to make changes, and decided to take the Hollywood approach to reality instead.
The suspension bridge is in fact a lightly built foot bridge, 600 feet long, intended primarily to carry compressed air and water lines across the cut. Many of the famous "aerial" photos of the work were taken from this foot bridge, before airplanes were common. Its sole purpose in this scene is to cast a shadow on the hillside.
The photographer is preparing to use flash powder to fill in the shadows inside the cab.
At the left, the man in the baggy jeans and straw hat wanders toward his place in history. In all of the pictures taken in this session, he stands in front of the scene, facing away from the camera with his shirt tails hanging out.
BUT IS IT HISTORY?
The building of the Panama Canal was one of the pivotal events in US history. It signaled the US's arrival as a world power, and produced a tremendous increase in national self confidence.
It was vital in providing transportation and naval defense of the US West Coast and Hawaii, as it eliminated some 5000 miles from the trip around Cape Horn.
The canal still stands as one of the great engineering feats of all time, and still operates as intended, with much of the original equipment intact.
The canal represents one of the first large scale uses of electricity. It is an integrated system, utilizing the tremendous rainfall of the region to operate the locks, and to generate hydroelectric power to run everything.
A key part of the project was one of the largest disease eradication programs ever, with public recognition of an insect as a disease vector.
The canal also represents one of the first major cases of US intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. The country of Panama and the Canal Zone exist as the result of US backing of a revolution against Colombia, former owner of the territory. After many denials, TR admitted "I took Panama", leading to the payment of millions of dollars in reparations, and the eventual return of the Canal Zone to Panama.
TR's trip was the first time a sitting US president traveled outside the country, communicating with Washington by wireless.
Of course, this project couldn't happen now, due to the massive environmental impact.
COLORS
The Canal Zone is tropical rain forest, 10 degrees from the equator. The scene takes place at the height of the rainy season, in a short break between showers (this is from the historical record). Colors are intense. Parrots, monkeys, butterflies, and biting insects abound. In the distance, another rain cloud approaches.
The colors of the soil and vegetation came from modern photos, paintings, and descriptions. Soil colors range from yellow, through ochre, to reddish brown and vermilion. A great deal of rock was encountered, leading to the use of 61,000,000 pounds of dynamite (30 kilotons!) during the project.
Vegetation is lush and encroaching, requiring constant clearing to control disease-causing mosquitoes.
Machine colors are based on common practices of the day, primarily streaks of dark gray, rust brown, and grease. Some of the shovels have trim colors added by their crews.
TECHNOLOGY
Upon studying photos carefully, it is evident that no two shovels were the same, and I suspect that the side walls were applied and removed with the changing seasons. Most photos show little or no side walls, while shovel # 114, which TR got aboard, was mostly enclosed.
No. 114 is an early Bucyrus 95 tonner, with a 5 cubic yard bucket. Successive shovel orders incorporated various improvements, including a powered bucket trip, eliminating the long trip rope in the craneman's hand. Additionally, several other manufacturers were represented, and smaller units were also used, but the Bucyrus 95 tonners were dominant. They were fast and powerful, and routinely loaded boulders weighing several tons.
The shovels used a 10 man crew, an engineer in the cab, operating the hoist and swing, a craneman, riding like a mahout on the boom, running the crowd and bucket trip, and more importantly, acting as eyes for the engineer. Shovel engineers were extremely well paid, while cranemen earned nearly as much.
Two stokers fed coal into the big boiler, and six men laid track in 4 foot sections for the machine to advance on. Some of the track sections can be seen at left. These crewmen were mostly Carribean islanders, and earned much less than the two operators.
The dirt cars have one side wall, and are open on the other side and the ends, so that they can be quickly unloaded by a huge plow, pulled by an equally huge winch.
Visitors to "The Diggings", of which there were many, commented on how loud it was, and that everything was moving all the time. As an example, the dirt trains never stopped, but moved slowly past the shovels as they were being loaded. The trains lined up so a shovel never had to wait. Trains moved to the dumps on a double track, signaled main line, again optimizing equipment utilization. Shovel maintenance and refueling took place at night, to avoid interference with production.
DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:
The terrain was created with HFLAB, and skewed, tiled, CSG'ed, and scaled into the desired contours, consisting of a bottom level, with about a foot of water at the bottom, 2 shelves of excavation, and the vegetated original land contour at the top. Colors are via a stretched crackle pattern.
The shovels, flat cars, and rock drills are all CSG, with a Level Of Detail option, depending on how close to the camera they are.
Gear teeth are a "radial" texture, partially transparent. A "spiral1" texture is used for the spiral ribs on the backs of the railroad wheels.
Hoist chains are a dark chrome, representing greasy bare steel.
Rope uses a torus splicing macro I developed, with a color gradient. I figured out a way to make the rope lay look better, but ran out of time to get it working. Next time...
Smoke and steam are media/interior. The smudgy semi-transparent appearance is typical of normal coal fired operation. The steam at the end of the boom is the exhaust from the crowd engine.
Wood textures and the sky sphere are adaptations of the standard POV textures.
Rivets are mostly via a transparent GIF image map, although a few 3-D rivets were also used.
The people are the current status of the configurable animated blobs guy I've been slowly developing. The fingers can be animated individually, and "fat" can be scaled for each component. Still not there, but improving...
SOURCES
BOOK: The Path Between The Seas - David McCullough
BOOK: Rails To The Diggings - Charles Small
BOOK: Heavy Equipment - Bruun + Keith
POST CARDS: I have some contemporary hand tinted post cards (which cannot be relied upon for color reference). Unfortunately, I purchased the best of these at an HCEA meet just 5 days before the IRTC deadline, so could not make full use of them to adjust my scene. One of these post cards shows the only full view of TR's shovel I have ever seen, although the caption makes no mention of TR's presence in the middle of the picture! He is climbing down from the machine, with no sign of dirt or soot showing on his white suit...and yes, Baggy Pants Man is still there!
VIDEO: Various documentaries on cable TV. A large amount of movie film was being shot back then.
OTHER: Additionally, I have been aboard 3 different working coal fired steam shovels, and have also photographed several others in operation.
Object count is 7791.
