Tower Maintenance
Painting the tower structure takes seven years to complete, and the workers who maintain the structure are known as "Stick Men". There are 563 steps from the roof of the tower building to the top of the tower which the maintenance teams use for the structure's upkeep. If the wind speed exceeds 72 kilometres per hour (45 mph; 39 kn) the top of the tower is closed as a safety precaution. There are 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) of cables to feed the 10,000 light bulbs which are used to illuminate the tower. In April 2002 the Tower maintenance team was featured in the BBC One programme, Britain’s Toughest Jobs.
Read more about this topic: Blackpool Tower
Famous quotes containing the words tower and/or maintenance:
“Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building—like Tower Bridge—or a classical front put on a steel frame—like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living—not something added, like sugar on a pill.”
—Eric Gill (1882–1940)
“... in the fierce competition of modern society the only class left in the country possessing leisure is that of women supported in easy circumstances by husband or father, and it is to this class we must look for the maintenance of cultivated and refined tastes, for that value and pursuit of knowledge and of art for their own sakes which can alone save society from degenerating into a huge machine for making money, and gratifying the love of sensual luxury.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)