strange road sign

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Tue 4 Oct 2005 17:43
strange road sign - AR-CoolC
I keep seeing a strange road sign around the country.

Its about the size of an A3 sheet of paper and has a barcode type design, but with the black parts of the barcode being a light grey colour, the sign usually sits square to the road and are just plonked in the middle of nowhere.

My guess is that they show something underground, but I'm sure one of you knows the correct meaning.

Cheers in advance
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Tue 4 Oct 2005 18:44
strange road sign - borasport20
The are barcodes, and are just location markers for some road surveying vehicles. Although they have 'only' been around for 10 years or so, I suspect they have been completely superseded by satellite navigation techniques


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Wed 5 Oct 2005 09:49
strange road sign - Dipstick
Which makes me think. What ARE those bits of road furniture that are - hmm - how to describe them. Small concrete kind of apddle shaped posts with a flat side, sometimes yellow, and have a plate with things like H 20 on them, and sometimes an arrow. Sometimes the plate is just on a building. Something to do with utility services underground perhaps? Been around forever but I've never really known what they are or what they tell me!



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Wed 5 Oct 2005 10:00
strange road sign - Steptoe
Slightly off-topic but I've always wondered what the occasional roadside buildings, best descibed as a large garden shed, are for.

Usually wooden, sometimes with a small parking area, with a door and a shuttered window, but I've *never* seen one occupied.

Always assumed they were for traffic census bods in the haycon pre-electronic age...

BTW Dipsticks paddles show location of water hydrants for Fire Service use; a fire officer will occasionally go round and paint them
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Wed 5 Oct 2005 10:23
strange road sign - Dipstick
Oh good Lord.

Thank you Steptoe. The mystery is not only resolved, but in my googling for more details I stumbled over the Royal Label Factory, of which I had never heard, who apparently make all our street and road signs (and I thought it was prisoners in Dartmoor.)

Fascinating web pages here; a flavour is given by this quote. Only in Britain, surely!

"When the metal's ready, the foundryman and his mate pull out ladle-fulls and pour the silvery liquid into the mould.

Within minutes, the steaming sand is sprinkled with a garden watering can, the top layer of sand is removed, and the newly minted sign is shovelled roughly to one side..."

tinyurl.com/76hrl

I thought the sheds contained electrical equipment - transformers perhaps?


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Wed 5 Oct 2005 12:54
strange road sign - CQ
Location of a fire hydrant.
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Wed 5 Oct 2005 13:40
strange road sign - local yokel
H on a yellow plate/post is a fire hydrant. One figure shows the distance to the outlet, and the other the diameter of the pipe connection, ISTR.
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Wed 5 Oct 2005 14:36
strange road sign - TheGrocer
I am fed up with being blinded by those signs that look like a large camera, normally black on a white background..whenever I drive past them they flash at me to let me know they are there...What are they!!

Oh hang on the postmans at the door with some large brown envelopes
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