25.02.2008

Swan Hunter cranes dismantled

Two historic cranes at the Swan Hunter shipyard at Wallsend on Tyneside have been dismanteld using a 550 tonne capacity crawler crane from Inverness-based heavy lift specialist Weldex.

Please register to see all images

The Kobelco SL6000 helping dismantle cranes at the Swan Hunter shipyard at Wallsend on Tyneside.

The Kobelco SL6000 crawler has been playing a major role over the past six months in dismantling the two historic cranes.

The two, 30-year-old, 180 tonne capacity Clark-Chapman travelling-luffing dockside cranes were amongst the largest of their type when they were first commissioned and were used in the building of some of the world’s most famous battle ships and liners.

Names such as the Royal Navy’s HMS Illustrious and Galahad, and before them, the revolutionary Turbinia (1897), Mauritania (1906), all conjure up nostalgic memories of the heyday of Tyneside ship-building.

But the iconic dockside cranes have not yet finished their working life. They have been sold to an Indian ship-building company, so are being carefully disassembled, shipped and re-erected to work in India.

“This was definitely not a demolition job”, explained Brian Hyde, technical services manager at Weldex. “The entire structure and all working components had to be carefully dismantled and prepared for onward shipment. Amongst the largest parts were the main jib housings, which weighed up to 170 tonne each.”
“But the new Kobelco SL6000 was ideal for this complicated job with a series of lifts which required different boom configurations. For the heaviest lifts, we used the maximum Super-lift configuration with 72 metres of main boom and a 30 metres back-mast for operation at 30 metre radius. For some of the higher-level lifts, we used a main boom of 60 metres with up to 48 metres of luffing fly-jib, to give a clear 100 metres of hook-height, and an impressive maximum capacity of 88 tonnes at a radius of 24 metres.”

Another feature of the SL6000, with its integral boom-mounted winches, is its ability to be re-configured in a limited space, and to travel and position itself on the narrow dockside jetty.