Two 500-tonne cranes have dismantled a 100-year old railway bridge, without knowing how heavy the structure being lifted was.
The steel bridge was located above a four-lane road, in Essen, Germany and was so old, there were no reliable figures for the precise weight of the structure.
After detailed advanced planning, it was decided the tandem lift would be completed by two Liebherr LTM 1500-8.1 mobile cranes, as they provided plenty of lifting capacity reserves.
Each crane was prepared with 135 tonnes of ballast and their telescopic booms were extended to 31.7 metres.
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The bridge needed to be hoisted with a radius of up to 16 metres and was released from the abutments by flame cutters.
During the lift, the crane control systems showed they were sharing a weight of 120 tonnes and had plenty of reserves without the need to install any telescopic boom guying.
Crane operators Bernd Janssen and Thorsten Mahlberg manoeuvred the bridge as instructed by marshal Dominik Ussat between the two 8-axle cranes and placed it on the ground, where it was then cut into small parts.