The installation of a massive railway bridge in extremely constricted conditions on a precipitous site presents a whole series of challenges. A difficult crane job, fiddly and complex – just the job for Uwe Langer. The boss of Riga-Mainz completed precisely this job in Bad Wimpfen, Baden-Württemberg with his team and a Liebherr LR 1600/2 crawler crane on behalf of Deutsche Bahn – and did it beautifully.
During the night before the bridge was actually hoisted the 40 metre truss construction was transported from the assembly site to the construction site on two parallel self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs) with ten axles each. To thread the two supports for securing the handling equipment through the trusses, the experts from Mainz fitted an extension on one side of each of them. This enabled a support crane on the other side of the bridge to handle them and draw the main support into the structure.
With the cross beam and attachment equipment the LR 1600/2 hoisted a total of 402 tonnes. The crawler crane was fitted with a total of 565 tonnes of ballast for the hoist. Slowly the crawlers reversed around ten metres until finally the bridge was positioned with pinpoint accuracy on the new abutments.