Previously in Cranes Today...

Light lifters hit the jackpot
1995

An unusual gambling law in the American Deep South has provided the opportunity for two small Grove cranes to prove their worth. A new law in Mississippi states that river boat casinos must float on water and be able to change location if necessary. Mark Beach, project manager of contractors W G Yates, faced the task of converting two Mississippi River barges into a floating platform for Harrah's Casino. For this task, a 20ft head log needed to be welded between the 50ft wide, 260ft long barges to bind them into one, solid unit.

A 35USt Grove RT600C and an American crawler were used to place the heaviest steel plates and to lift material on-board. These cranes could have been used to place and hold the steel plates used to connect the two barges together, but this would have tied up the cranes which were needed elsewhere. "The key to maintaining our schedule was keeping the welding crews busy," Beach said. "The major bottleneck we saw was the cranes we needed to move steel."

To prevent this bottleneck, two Grove 8t AP308s, supplied by Brambles Equipment Company of Memphis, Tennessee, were bought in to place most of the steel. This freed up the larger cranes, which were used to lift the heavier steel sections and bring material on board. "There are no big loads in most of this work," Beach commented. "You can use several of the AP308s instead of one big crane. It lets you put several crews to work at the same time. You are not tied down to one piece of equipment."

Peiner giant tower crane for Brazil
1975

What is claimed to be the largest selftravelling tower crane in the world is to be shipped to Brazil. Peiner AG have sold the crane (maximum height underhook 125m, 62m radius) to Messrs. Servix Engenharia, São Paulo. The Peiner crane will help to build a dam in Bahia, Brazil. Together with five other Peiners it will place concrete and thus help construct the walls of the dam and the foundation of the generator house

Nautical manoeuvre
1985

Painstaking accuracy was required in the building of a one-fifth scale model of Captain Cook's ship Endeavour by craftsmen at the Whitby engineering firm of H D and T Consultants. The end result, after eight months of work, was a magnificent 6.9m long replica weighing 3.5t. But while traditional craft skills were needed in the construction of the model, the latest in crane technology was required to move the Endeavour from the workshop and on to a low loader.

Barnhart towers above reactor
2005

US firm Barnhart Crane & Rigging has used its modular lift tower to lift a 360t, 30m long reactor at BP Amoco's Toledo, Ohio refinery. The new reactor was designed to meet the tougher standards of the US Clean Air Act. The company lifted the reactor with 27 strands threaded through a single jack on a 36m tower. The tail end was supported by a Barnhart-built fixture mounted on a Goldhofer platform trailer.