Man hole Cover Collection

[Rangnath]

Each cover weighs between 15 and 55 Kg. My Album is quite heavy as you can imagine, containing as it does with over 55 specimens.  My focus is on Indian Man hole covers and while many of mine come from Portland, Oregon, my pride and joy is this one from Brooklyn, New York City, which is over 105 cm in diameter. 

Look for these on Ebay when I intend to part with doubles.
richie

[andyg]

Manhole is generally one word - two words (man hole) means something quite different

[Figleaf]

You should visit Rome. I noticed that there were quite a few with fascist era symbols left.

How do you cover the holes when you have put the covers in your vest pocket? If you wish, I could send you some duplicates of my collection of hub caps. They would prevent people from falling in and double as speed bump.



Peter

[chrisild]

And then you have the problem that some of the pieces which appear to be genuine are mere imitations. (Click the manhole cover image on this page http://www.haase-und-knels.de/arbeiten/kommunikation-im-raum.html to see it "in action".)

Christian

[Rangnath]

Man hole cover? Cover manhole?  Hmm. 
Thank you all. As usual, I learn much more than I wanted.
I intend to visit Rome next April, in fact. As for trading hub caps for manholes, I'm not sure figleaf.
Aren't we dealing with apples and oranges, or should I say, bananas and donuts?
richie

[Abhay]

Dear Richie,

The Manhole cover you show from India, is it made of Cast Iron or Concrete? In India, the earlier Manhole covers were made of Cast Iron, but due to thefts of these covers, now they are mostly made of Concrete.

Abhay

[Rangnath]

All of our manhole covers are made of cast iron.  Someday, probably sooner than I would like, thefts will lead to replacements with concrete.  But as of now, we have some wonderful examples of Indian iron work in the streets of Portland and, as I've recently discovered, in New York City as well.
richie

[Coinsforever]

Very unusual interest of collecting 'manhole covers"


Square manhole cover in Hong Kong covering the sewers




As you walk along the Park Promenade from the ferry terminal and Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel you encounter dozens of manhole covers, most of which have a small Mickey in the middle.


Will upload more unusual covers............

Cheers

[Bimat]

In Mumbai and surrounding areas, these manholes are stolen. Why? Because they fetch a good amount in scrap market!

But now I know there are some people who actually COLLECT them. Hmmm.. Are some of those stolen manholes resting in Portland?

Aditya

[UK Decimal +]

One from my collection ...

Bill.

[Coinsforever]

Historic Shanghai right under your feet
A Shanghai attraction under your feet rather than a 100-plus stories in the air





The Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC, 工部局, literally "Works Department") was wholly foreign-controlled run by the Brtis, Americans, New Zealanders, Australians, Danes and Japanese. Neither the Chinese nor the French had a seat on the council.

Buildings mysteriously come and go in this city -- it's just how it is -- but the little bits of historic Shanghai that manage to stick around which are extraordinary to stumble upon. We'll admit that a manhole cover is rarely something to get excited about, but when it's square and reads S.M.C. it's a rare find.

S.M.C, the Shanghai Municipal Council, is the group that ran the International Concession from 1854 to 1943. The SMC (along with its foreign residents) maintained its own police force and trained its own military reserves. What the SMC really is known for though is the architecture and development of The Bund, which is where we stumbled over this manhole cover.

Located on Fuzhou Lu between Henan Zhong Lu and Jingxi Zhong Lu (near Hamilton House), this square manhole cover has withstood much of the area's renovations even if it's easy to miss in the pavement outside a public security bureau building. Although we don't suggest stopping to snap a photo (the station's guards aren't huge fans cameras on that block), definitely wander past to see a little piece of historic Shanghai that doesn't look like it's going to be swept away by the bulldozers of change any time soon. It's not 1930s Shanghai glamour but it's still an interesting window into local history.

This is far from the only historic manhole cover to survive urban development so keep your eyes pealed across the Bund area as well as in the French Concession where many of the old covers are actually still in use today.

Tags: shanghai history

[Rangnath]

I have certainly learned much from you about manhole covers. 
Anyway, here's an image of a man using a manhole cover to cover his man hole.
richie

[Prosit]

The lady seems amused.
Dale

[chrisild]

Well, she gets to see the side that we cannot see. Here is another sort-of-manhole, at the main railway station in Ljubljana. A larger image is at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Brdar-Joyce.JPG

James Joyce? Right. This is a plaque on platform 1 which commemorates the one night Joyce and his wife spent in the city ... because they "mistakenly disembarked there, believing they had reached their destination - the city of Trieste." http://slonews.sta.si/index.php?id=1049&s=44

Christian

[Figleaf]

 

Repeating an imagined story on how the couple spent the night in Ljubljana here, from the page you linked to. It makes this story even better.

Peter


"Slovenian author and screenwriter Miha Mazzini gave probably one of the most amusing accounts of Joyce's "incomprehensible" novels: when he and Nora got off the train in Ljubljana, Joyce is severely beaten up by a group of tense citizens due to a breakdown in communication. Swollen from the beating, Joyce mumbles something unintelligible into his beard and nobody can understand him. He then concludes: "When I began talking unintelligibly, no doubt obscurely to a listener, everyone was nice to us." Unintelligibility is immortality!

Some passers-by find the meaning of the plaque by sculptor Jakov Brdar at Ljubljana's central railway station equally obscure. Well, couldn't we say this is a good start?"