In late August, Sarens worked with client Franki to replace an old railway bridge in Belgium using a lattice-boom crane and the twin barge Karel-Victor.

A Liebherr LR1750 lattice-boom crane loaded the new 360-tonne, 54.1-meter-long bridge onto an inland vessel for transport. Sarens operators used a 42-meter SDB boom configuration with 220+95-tonne counterweight and 330-tonne SL ballast. The crane could not be positioned next to the quay due to the presence of a gas line, so it was kept 9 meters from the edge, which determined its capacity.

At another site, a Liebherr LR1600-2 lattice-boom crawler was loaded onto the coupled barge Karel-Victor for the one-day journey to the bridge installation site. Because of physical limitations, including river width, depth, and bridge heights along the route, the Karel-Victor was the largest available barge. Smaller barges, however, were not an option because of the stability requirements of the crane on the barge.

The low height of the bridges along the transport route meant that the LR1600-2 had to be transported on the barge almost completely disassembled. Once it arrived on site, operators spent two days assembling it onboard the barges into an 48-meter SDB configuration with 150+65-tonne counterweight and 220-tonne SL ballast with fixed B2 stinger.

Once everything was ready, operators spent one day removing the two old bridges, which weighed 250 and 180 tonnes, respectively, and measured 54 meters long. The next day, they placed four concrete foundations weighing 65, 50, 15, and 10 tonnes. Finally, they spent one more day installing the new railway bridge.

The lifts with the LR1600-2 (with floating Superlift) were conducted onboard the barge Karel-Victor. After pickup of the load, the crane had to slew and crawl on the barge.

“The stability of the barge was a very critical factor in the operations, and the barge needed to be ballasted accurately during the lifting/slewing/crawling operations,” says Kenny Decoster, project manager.” This required very close coordination between the crane operator and the barge supervisor. The team accomplished the challenge in the safest manner.”