Wmega  Drain

 

Omega Drain map

Tick in the arched brick tunnel

zig-zag in the brick tunnel

rectangular concrete pipe

Tick and Random, about to enter the connector tunnel

sewer pipe in the southernmost tunnel

Random and Tick, by the outfall

 

 

I've known about this drain for years, never got around to exploring it, blah blah blah... Well, we finally got around to exploring it. And it was good.

The infall is a 6' tall x 12' wide rectangular tunnel with stone walls. We had to climb (or in my case, plummet) into a deep culvert to get to the entrance.

After a long, easy walk through the rectangular tunnel, it made a left turn and morphed into a beautiful 7' brick arch, with short stone walls and a natural (bedrock and mud) floor. Occasional debris in the tunnel backed up water, making it a little deep.

We eventually came to a junction room, where the tunnel we were in intersected with a nice 6' brick arch to the right, and a pair of taller brick arches to our left. There was a large pile of woody debris here, and the water in the middle of the room looked to be exceptionally deep. We could see the drain outfall through the pipes to our left, so we headed right. The tunnel here had a nice yellow brick floor, that eventually switched to red brick.

After a long stretch of brick arch, the tunnel got even more interesting. The was a triangular loop of sorts, with a mud-filled brick arch forming one side, an 8'x6' concrete rectangle forming another side, and the third side being a heavily mud and debris-filled concrete rectangle. We turned right, and continued for a ways through a rectangular tunnel. The floor here was full of rocks and trash... I'm fighting an inner ear infection, so constantly having to shift my balance on the rough floor made me very dizzy.

We headed back to the triangular loop, and headed down a side pipe that continued off the mud-filled leg. From a map that I had obtained from the city, we had theorized that this connected to the south half of the drain system. We were right. This connector tunnel was crawling height, pretty dry, and had a few interesting brick and stone rooms along the way.

The connector tunnel eventually got taller, and had a large gutter slit that we ended up using as our exit later on. The tunnel made a left turn, and became another 6' brick arch. A large sewer pipe ran along one wall. The tunnel smelled like poop, and even through I couldn't find a leak in the sewer pipe anywhere, there was a lot of toilet paper in the water.

After a long ways of stinky tunnel, we came to a short overflow pipe, connecting to a mud-filled tunnel of equal size to the one we were in (about 8' tall at that point). Shortly, we came to the exit... four 8' tall arched pipes dumping out into a huge concrete culvert. Very cool.

We backtracked through the sewer pipe section, and made a very obvious exit through the gutter slit in the connector tunnel (next to an intersection, with several groups of people watching us). It was excellent.

 

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