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Hey All, This will be a board for people who like draining. Anyone can join, and anyone can post. Participation isn't necessary, but is encouraged.
lets keep it chill folks and have a good time.

Keep on Drainin!
-S

Any Questions? PM- Steam

This Is Phalen Creek, My favorite drain In the Twin Cities. This is just a slightly modified version of the post I had put in the private board.

Phalen is one of the largest and oldest drains in St. Paul. As such, it has loads of different architecture styles and shape changes. No other drain I've been in has been as surprising as this one, except possibly Davern st.
Enjoy:

Hopping from one section to another-

Just chilling in one of the larger chambers-

Looking out to the submerged outfall-

More interesting that we thought that one would be-

A nice size change-

Taking another break-

Old Crumbling section-

The outfall to One of the Helix Drains of Minneapolis. After a full night exploring around inside the place, we were greeted by this view as we came out into the morning:



Give how adjusted our eyes were, it almost really looked like that. Sometimes my shitty little camera amazed me. Other times not so much.
This is one of those times. We had climbed the massive concrete spiral near what we thought would be the end of our journey, but upon reaching the top, we were presented with even more tunnels. As it went, we found another normal staircase further down the main shaft. Since I had never seen pictures of that one online before I tried to take a shot but alas, my 14$ camera had other plans. I suppose it turned out ok considering:

And One more for Today:

Back in my old town, their stormwater system had a lot of small drains instead of one larger one. One of my favorites was this one:

Waterstreet Complex:



After the two drains came back together, it opened into a pretty tall room with lots of drains dumping into it. I took a few shots and sewed them together into this one:



I loved that room. The weirdest stuff used to wash up in there. Everything from doll heads to brooms. On the bottom you can see the right entrance and in the bottom corner you can see the tip of the left entrance.

Having a little fun over the weekend
Went to Triple helix drain and borrowed a friend's great camera:

Back in the day before we knew someone had already named this one we called it "Sharpie Racing" drain.

In a tough battle for my favorite outfall (neck in neck with the great helix) is angel outfall. I just discovered tis one yesterday and I spent half of the day taking photos of it. I managed to borrow a good camera and a tripod so I made things happen. Hope you enjoy!

Here is one in sepia:



I'm not really sure what the halos are for, but my guess would be structural support. My only other guess would be to catch detritus like that tree there.
(It turns out they are to slow the flow of water before it discharges, Thanks TC!)

Here is one in normal color:



Walking down the stream at the outfall I found a tiny pink child bike. Kind of creepy in retrospect, but it seemed peaceful at the time.

This Weekend I went up to the twin cities and found some amazing places. Right now I'm borrowing my friends Rebel XT and am having a ball with it.

This one I Blanched then added color back in with photoshop:



The rest are natural:

Scheffer Tunnel-



More Scheffer-



And Again-



Back to my favorite, Phalen-



And lastly, A panorama I made of the West Bank Tailraces.

The "Halos" are in place to slow down water flow before it discharges into the river.

A new adventure had this weekend. After acquiring a new drain map from the eingeneering department, me and AD set out to locate some of them. We found a ton of nice ones and I even brought along a borrowed camera for this one.

This is one of the infalls to the upstream part of the Angel system (see earlier posts for the outfall.)

One of the smaller drains near my house.

Trailbound, Is that last set from norton's brook?

Posted by Steam Trailbound, Is that last set from norton's brook?

Indeed it is.

http://farm4.stati...1_8f78a85d5f_b.jpg

http://farm4.stati...5_977358f420_b.jpg

http://farm4.stati...7_2ae863464e_b.jpg

http://farm4.stati...8_32a7212d73_b.jpg


nothing too exciting, so far, the drains near me that i have ventured into have shown me very little discovery. One day I hope to find find something amazing though...

Xodus,
Do you live near a river? that is one of the best ways to find drains, just walk up and down the bank.

Looks like the drain you've got here is pretty full of graffiti, is is near a particularly urban area?

yea, i live in staten island NY, so its really urban, i've been looking for drains around me for awhile, so far the ones i have found are really really small.

have you tried this one?

40.602273,-74.171823

Forget that one, this one looks huge: 40.637556,-74.127663

i have not tried these, thanks for the info, im probably going to check them out this weekend.