Please Explain

Posted on Mon, 14 August, 2017 by LensScaper

It is not uncommon to find pavements in London and elsewhere ‘marked up’ to indicate where cables run underground prior to the pavement being dug up, but this set of markings – that reminded me of Morse Code – were indecipherable to me.

About LensScaper

Hi - I'm a UK-based photographer who started out 45+ years ago as a lover of landscapes, inspired by my love of outdoor pursuits: skiing, walking and climbing. Now retired, I seldom leave home without a camera and I find images in unexpected places and from different genres. I work on the premise that Photography is Art and that creativity is dependent on the cultivation of 'A Seeing Eye'.
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15 Responses to Please Explain

  1. Sue says:
    Mon, 14 August, 2017 at 11:18

    Strange indeed!

    Like

  2. oneowner says:
    Mon, 14 August, 2017 at 14:08

    XK in Morse Code. I think it was a Jaguar model a few years ago. Now it’s an interesting photo.

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  3. Chillbrook says:
    Mon, 14 August, 2017 at 15:52

    You’ve got me beat Andy but it does make an interesting image that’s for sure.

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  4. paula graham says:
    Mon, 14 August, 2017 at 16:31

    Interesting indeed!

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  5. shoreacres says:
    Mon, 14 August, 2017 at 21:50

    You know me — I had to look it up. The markings are used by various utilities to show what’s going on underground. Each color has a specific meaning. In Britain, red designates electric power lines, conduit, and cables. White indicates telecommunication. The dots show the position of each cable or duct.

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  6. shoreacres says:
    Mon, 14 August, 2017 at 21:53

    I split my comment so it wouldn’t get thrown into spam. Here’s another article that, in the fourth photo down, shows the same kind of line and dot pattern as your photo, albeit with more dots/cables.

    As for the photo itself, the red and white remind me of automobile or truck lights — they’re even driving on the correct sides of the road — for the U.S.!

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    • LensScaper says:
      Tue, 15 August, 2017 at 07:41

      You are hereby appointed my official information finder! I must be getting lazy (or perhaps busy currently) – I could have found out all that if I had put my mind to it. I knew the marking indicated utilities underground but that’s as far as I had got. Thanks Linda.

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      • shoreacres says:
        Wed, 16 August, 2017 at 01:11

        I got quite an education in the process. There are some differences between the U.S. and Britain in terms of the marks, although the colors seem to be internationally agreed upon. They’re important, too. Every now and then someone gets the marks wrong, or doesn’t pay attention to them, and we get everything from a power outage to (Oh! horrors!) an internet outage.

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  7. bluebrightly says:
    Tue, 15 August, 2017 at 20:34

    Wow, Linda (Shoreacres) to the rescue again with outstanding research. I didn’t post them here, but I took some photos of red marks made prior to some work near my house. They went across the sidewalk and onto the ground, stopping just short of a red rose bush that matched them exactly! Yours are MUCH neater than any I see here in the states – I wonder what that means?

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  8. lisakunk says:
    Sun, 20 August, 2017 at 18:33

    Nope. No explanation from me.

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Comments are closed.