Saller lifts Bavarian bridge

“Normally we would have hoisted the load with just one crane and an adjustable yoke, but the customer insisted that the work should be carried out using two cranes”, said Klaus Ruhland, who completed the calculations for the tandem hoist together with Dennis Kase.

It was tight with only 20cm between the telescopic boom of the LTM 1750-9.1 and the ropes on the telescope guying of the LTM 1400/1 when the cranes’ superstructures reached the trickiest moment of the complex slewing process.

The LTM 1750-9.1 had to reach over the smaller crane and its boom to pick up the load, so the massive nine-axle machine was set up with a 35m luffing jib and its telescopic boom was extended to almost 40m for the actual hoist.

“The close positioning of the two cranes was due to the fact that we had to work from the abutment of a road bridge. We were not able to position the cranes on the bridge structure as a result of the support pressures they generate.” said Franz Saller, managing director and head project manager.

Full closure of the rail network and the road for the hoisting and set-up work was required. But the job was carried out quickly and smoothly during the night in the Bavarian capital by the team from Kran Saller.

The actual hoisting of the bridge component took exactly one hour, after which it was positioned around 30m away on the piers of the future bridge. Immediately after the load had been detached, the team started dismantling their Liebherr cranes.