Even for a company as experienced as Vernazza, the job was anything but ordinary: For starters, it involved a 728-tonne railroad bridge, which meant having to lift a particularly heavy load in the Italian comune of Soave, close to San Bonifacio. In addition, the 78 meter-long steel structure had to be positioned over the Alpone River. This meant that the Vernazza crew would have to use three lattice boom crawler cranes at the same time, with two of them on the right side of the river and one on the opposite bank. As part of the corresponding plans, a Tadano CC 68.1250-1 would be bearing the brunt of the work.
The team decided on the CC 68.1250-1 primarily due to its powerful performance characteristics. After all, it had to first lift the bridge by itself to a height of 15 meters at a radius of 20 meters and then travel 45 meters on double-layered red ironwood crane mats in the direction of the Alpone River. To this end, the bridge was rigged at four points and the crane was set up with an SSL configuration with a 72-meter-long main boom.
Once the CC 68.1250-1 reached its final position, the other two cranes joined in â one was a Tadano CC 38.650-1 with a 68-meter-long boom, while the other was a 400-tonne crawler crane with a 35-meter boom. These two cranes grabbed the ends of the bridge with their hooks, which made it possible to maneuver the load with such precision that the Vernazza assembly technicians were able to set it down exactly at the intended support points.
A perfectly planned lift
We are tremendously proud of our team and of how smoothly the complex lift went. Mauro Milano underscores: âEven the planning stages were challenging. After all, it was a job that involved three large lattice boom crawler cranes, so our engineers really had to go the extra mile to make sure that all the booms and would be perfectly synchronized throughoutâ.
The right crane for the job
In addition, the results showed that the company had chosen the perfect crane for the project. Above all, this served as further evidence of the fact that the Vernazza teamâs powerful CC 68.1250â1 is truly the machine of choice for tough jobs, which made the Vernazza transport fleetâs roughly 200-km trip from Ravenna worth it. âWe use our CC 68-1250-1 regularly and benefit from its ease of assembly every single time. To put it simply, we can fully set up the crane with a five-person team in about one weeks even under adverse conditions.â
Tutto bene
The job in Soave required around 20 Vernazza employees for all three cranes. It took them a variety of changing tasks and a total of two months at the work site, but everything worked exactly as planned despite the tight schedule. Mauro Milano is pleased accordingly: âBy using the right machine and the right people, we finished the job to the full satisfaction of our customer â and thatâs ultimately what it comes down to,â he succinctly puts it.