never explored them myself. anybody have pics or stories?

cool where and what is that of?

FDT knew about them apparently

The steam tunnels? I know nothing!

i like monster on wheat.

There was a thread about a month ago about the tunnels. Look it up in the archives.

quote:

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Look it up in the archives.

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If only we had a search function...

They run underneath the majority of main campus providing utilities (steam, power, water, etc) to the buildings. I'm not sure if they extend across to west campus, although I imagine they would. A couple of semesters ago I took a HVAC class and we took a little tour of the basement of Langford. I saw the opening into the tunnel system although never went in. Personally, it didn't look all that exciting. No ninja turtles or anything...

All I know is that one day I mentioned to one of my friends who's in the Corps that I wanted to go see the old FDT hole or whatever and he told me that they've been warned that anyone who is caught in the tunnels will immediately be expelled from the University. I still want to see it though, so maybe when I graduate....

...definite expulsion...

they must be hiding something down there.

they are hiding the defense down there.

Its a cover for the "secret" Al Queda operation that ATM is running.

Steam tunnels? Yes, they're there, and yes, you can get damned near anywhere through them.

When I was a fish and a p-head, a couple buddies & I routinely visited the tunnels, and our favorite destination was the cafeteria in The Commons. After eating under duress in Duncan, it was always fun to go raid the dessert refrigerator in the oh-dark-thirty hours & load up. One time, we actually left tracks on the floor, but my amigo's idea to clean them up with his t-shirt only exacerbated the problem... so we bolted. Took me a few months to screw-up the courage to revisit THAT target area, for sure!

Another time, we got totally lost over in the vicinity of the Journalism Building [we knew where we were b/c we'd "prairie-dogged" up through a man-hole & saw it]. Anyway, we ended up in an old ["Fish '22'" in candle-scorch on the overhead] that ran [probably still runs ] under Military Walk. We prairie-dogged again & discovered we were right in front of Walton Hall; right in front of a bunch of non-regs savoring some Lone Stars on the steps! We pushed the cover out of the way, hopped out, dusted off, and sauntered away like we were supposed to be there! It was pretty funny, b/c the beer-drinkers kinda looked at us like, "Oh, somebody's comin' out of the steam tunnels..." and went back to their '42 game!

The last good steam tunnel story I'll share is the one involving some of the dork-heads who were in my outfit, a class ahead of mine; when they were fish.

These two pin-heads went tunneling one night during finals week & got lost. Hey, that happens.

They decide to prairie-dog, again, not necessarily a below-average in headwork. They climb up a ladder they see & shine their light through the grate from below.

Now, this is where their judgement really starts to come into question for me, since what they hoped to see is a mystery, I mean, try looking through the bottom of a coffee can with holes in it & you'll share the same sight you see looking up out of the steam tunnels through a man-hole cover. Anyway, they shined their light right up through the legs of a Kampus Kop who'd decided to warm himself on that cold December night by standing on a steam-tunnel man-hole cover!

Again, not an unrecoverable situation. When the KK yells, "Hey! Come out of there!", you drop your butt back down the ladder & haul-a$$. These two mental giants, however, decided to ask the KK to step off the cover, push it out of the way, and, well, you can guess the rest of the story. Duh.

They were supposedly suspended for the balance of the semester but they sure were there to "welcome" my fish buddies & me after FOW. Had very little respect for these two...!

The Batt did a story on the steam tunnels last year and printed the blue prints in the paper. They run all over campus.

Now, the majority of them are filled with electrical conduit and water pipes as the campus continues to grow.

I know most buildings on campus, if not all of them, including dorms, have access to the tunnels. Legend has it, that under the corp dorms, upper classmen would make fish live in the tunnels to prevent other outfits from playing pranks on eachother, via the tunnels, which was very common. The fish that lived in the tunnels were called "moles". Supposedly, there are some really cool writings and stuff on some of the steam tunnels from the past 75 years of people going in them. They are hard to access now, and expulsion awaits you if you get caught in them.

RR-

I was actually quite surprised to see that there really weren't a great many "tags" down in the tunnels beneath The Quad.

We put some in the one that basically runs in front of Dorm 4 [our dorm that year- and this particular tunnel is right under the front walkway that leads to the center of The Quad], and there were a [very] few in the main lane that runs between Duncan & Heldenfehls, but that was almost all of it.

I'd always heard there was some secret cavern down there filled with Old Army stuff, but we never found it. Major-league downer, since it wasn't through a lack of effort !

Forgot to mention the time-frame: early eighties.

most schools have them, we do. They were built back in the 40s-50s I think for nuclear bomb scares coming from teh Cold War, at least that's what I heard.

Actually, there are old "fall out" shelters all over the A&M campus for the nuclear bomb scare.

The steam tunnels were for plumbing/steam dissipation

Gig 'em. I too spent many hours in the tunnels in the early 80's. Those of us in Gator 2 knew the tunnels well enough to get anywhere on campus. We quit after my visiting brother stole a gallon of cheeze whiz out of the commons storeroom.

i found it

anybody else no any info?

I want the blue prints.

what is the penalty if you get caught and you have graduated?

Back in the day when I was a student worker at the Physical Plant, we'd work on occasion in the tunnels on the north side of campus.
There are two types of tunnel systems that run on campus: steam, and fallout shelters. We did most of the work in the fallout shelters (painting pipes, running conduit, fixing leaks, ect).
It's true that they were made in the late 40's - early 50's as bomb shelters and are interconnected. Though, mostly it's just the older dorms and academic buildings that they run under/through. We'd even run across old military rations that were stored in there from time to time. Usually, just toilet paper and food supplies that were almost 50 years old.
No kidding, we'd open up areas that hadn't been accessed in god knows how long and find roaches as big as my fist (roughly 6" across) that had been feeding on those military carbohydrate rations (basically just hard candy)!
If your not supposed to be down there (i.e. given access/or permission), you don't have any business being down there. There is nothing to see, but pipes, pumps, electrical lines, and insects.