Showground machinery on the move

The gates may have closed at Bauma for another three years, but the challenge to move heavy construction machinery out of the showground is now underway.

One example came with the complicated transportation of a 4,200 square metre surface miner to the Munich exhibition ground in readiness for the beginning of the event.

The 200 tonne, 30 m long machine from the Wirtgen Group is used in opencast mining for cutting and crushing up to 12 million tonnes of material each year. In early March, it left the factory in Windhagen, near Bonn, Germany by truck, destined for the Rhine docks at Andernach. From there it was transported by barge on the Rhine-Main-Danube canal to Kelheim.

During the weekend of 20/21 March the surface miner was lifted onto a waiting truck using to mobile hydraulic cranes. A police escort accompanied the heavy load on the last leg of its journey on the highway to Munich.