Four KIROW railway slewing cranes deployed in Rastatt

...with a loud crack, the steel superstructure detached from the bridge abutment and 75 tonnes of bridge were easily suspended from the two Kirow KRC1200 cranes.
This was the first crane act following six months of preparation at the DB NETZ AG’s construction site where the railway bridges that cross the industrial canals in Rastatt needed to be renewed.

Two ageing 24-metre-long double-span steel superstructures (including the concrete abutments that had started to seriously deteriorate in the upper area) required replacing. This job was special in that it was necessary to complete the work within two consecutive service shut-downs lasting 86 hours at the weekend with only three total shut-downs lasting around four hours.

Project description:

During the first construction phase and first total shut-down, the old superstructure was excavated and – once the old abutment benching had been removed and the new benching had been installed – the new superstructure was lifted into place again only 20 hours later during the second total shut-down of services.

The steel superstructure, which was lifted out during the total shut-down of services, was then loaded laterally in the adjacent track on to a special flat wagon with swivel bolster. The up to five metres wide reinforced-concrete abutment benching components were loaded on to special 10-axle laterally sliding low-loader wagons and transported by the work train before then being lifted off the wagons to the side of the overhead line and positioned in front of the head of the working track on the beam side.

Once the old abutment benching had been demolished, the new reinforced concrete abutment benching components were carefully moved forward, lifted in, turned 90° in the excavated pit and placed in their final position.

The general contractor did not allow services on the adjacent track to be shut down so all work had to be planned and carried out under this condition.

The old steel superstructure was meanwhile unloaded from the wagon at the construction site’s facilities using mobile cranes, the new 130-tonne thick-plate superstructure was loaded and prepared for transport from the construction site’s facilities to the construction site for the following night.

The new superstructure was driven into the construction site with the work train at the start of the second four-hour total shut-down of services and then lifted in tandem with two KRC1200s under the existing overhead line.

The large external dimensions and the locally cramped conditions made it impossible to lift the abutment benching components during the second construction phase in the same way they had been during the first phase of construction.
It was only possible to lift them in from the neighbouring track 14 metres away and then only with an additional third KRC1200, which arrived from the former Wintersdorf station.

Counting the deployed replacement crane, a total of four Kirow railway slewing cranes were in operation in Rastatt during the two-week construction period!