One Big Crane

One big crane.

Over the course of the bank holiday weekend where I work at Diamond Light Source a huge crane appeared to remove and replace some air blast coolers. The crane was needed to span the building which is round and to be able to span the lift area. It arrived on Friday and work began assembling the crane. By the time I went home around lunchtime it had changed considerably so I decided to pop back for some photo’s later only to find the crane in the final stages of assembly. I would come back in the morning but plans usually go astray and I went off with my wife to Newbury forgetting about the crane but passed one of the coolers being taken away on a truck.  I remembered on the way back, not hard as it towered above Diamond so after going home and a quick cuppa I went back and got a few photos of the crane at work. I wanted to ask if I could get some of the crane from the work area but the guys left and seem to go off to lunch. I think they had hit a problem as the crane was dismantled the next day and left. Here are some of the photos of the crane I took.

The Air Blast Coolers to be removed.

The Crane

The load spreaders.

Crane head on

The legs on the spreaders

A second crane

 At this point it got interesting with a second crane lifting sections onto the end of the first crane.

Lifting on the sections

Taking shape

Getting longer

 At this point I wondered how it would lift all that lot off the deck.

Disappearing away

Going on for ever.

The end of the crane.

 I left at this point to come back the next day

Now thats a crane

One bit of the crane

The whole thing

 

Lunch time

Thats it for now.

The next day the crane was dismantled and will return at a later date