Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

I thought this may interest a couple of the civils.

Keltbray have just erected the UKs tallest land based crane. The crane is to be used for the demolition of Market Place Station at Earls Court. The demolition requires the removal of all the station buildings (simple enough) and also all of the portal beams that span the underground lines running underneath the site (not so simple). There are 61 portal beams in total with weights varying between 200 tons and 1400 tons. The original plan was to break out each beam by cutting them into 20 ton sections and then lifting each section out. This would have taken up to two years to complete the beam removal and would have also resulted in numerous rail closures (in London’s current strike-riddled system this would have heaped even more misery onto commuters). The demolition plans were nearing approval when some bright spark decided to ‘go big early’ and suggested using a massive crane instead.  The plan would be to make a cut at either end of a portal beam and then lift it out in one piece. This idea would shave years off the project program and was selected as the method for removing the portal beams.

As a result the crane has just been erected at Earls Court:

It stands at nearly 120m high and has a counter balance weight of 12000 tons.

Everyone at Keltbray is very excited about it.