Goliath takes on Crossrail
07 October 2012
UK manufacturer Street Crane Company has 10 of its cranes deployed across three sites of the Crossrail project, the largest civil engineering project in Europe, spanning 118 km across London and the UK southeast.
The firm delivered a 40 tonne safe working load Goliath crane to the Oxford Street site this summer. The crane is being used to remove excavated material and lower pre-cast concrete segments for the tunnel and Tottenham Court Road Western Ticket Hall.
The Oxford Street crane is a double girder box beam design. It has two, custom engineered, 20 tonne TVX hoists. The crane is working at a lift height of 37 m – the combined height above ground and the distance to the base of the excavation shaft.
Six further single girder cranes from Street are in use in the tunnel segment casting shops where thousands of tunnel segments are produced. These cranes are used for demoulding the cast segments and transporting them out of the workshop. In the adjoining curing yards, where the tunnel segments must rest to gain further strength, three rail running Goliath cranes are also employed.
The new 118 km Crossrail line starts at Heathrow/Maidenhead in the west and goes to Shenfield/Abbey Wood in the east. The route will have 37 stations; with 21 km of the line running underground in twin bore tunnels.
