A Royale role for cranes

Cranes play a starring part in the new James Bond film, Casino Royale, overshadowing even the new leading man, Daniel Craig.

UK-based crane suppliers, Lee Lifting Services Ltd and City Lifting Ltd provided the cranes used both to build the film set in Nassau in the Bahamas and for the stunt fight scenes that were filmed in Nassau and England.

City Lifting provided two Comansa LC5211 flat top tower cranes, together with operators, Jimmy Randall and Scott White, to work on construction of the film set and as the main stage for the stunt fight between James Bond and his enemy, Mollaka, which takes place on the highest point of the cranes. The difference in tower height between the two cranes allowed for stunt jumps. The 14-storey steel framed set was built on a Royal Bahamas Defence Force training site on the island of New Providence.

Lee Lifting provided two Liebherr LTM 1080 all terrain mobile cranes for further stunts carried out at Dunsfold airport in the UK and a Grove GMK5100 all terrain, to erect the tower cranes in Nassau supplied by City Lifting and to carry the safety cables attached to the stunt men fighting on top of the tower cranes.

The City Lifting cranes were shipped direct from the UK to Nassau in standard 40 foot containers. The Lee cranes were disassembled and shipped from the Port of Southampton in the UK to Jacksonville, Florida, where they were disassembled further, to accommodate the local transport weight of 10 tonnes per axle, for the journey to Miami. They were then rebuilt in the docks and loaded on to ships operated by Crowley Maritime Corporation, for shipment to Nassau. Crowley also carried 11 excavators, 28 pickup trucks and 25 production trailers to the film set.