This was in today’s news wire, but the story wasn’t nealy as detailed as it could have been. Actually, I am suprised it hasn’t been posted yet and if it has, my apologies, I must have missed it.
Also, the oil patch has slowed down a little, so I am coming out of my MIA status for a bit. [:D]
GILLETTE – The world’s largest crane in handling capacity collapsed Saturday near Wright, sending three injured people – two critically – to hospitals and blocking a rail line at the Black Thunder coal mine.
Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration inspectors and crane company representatives were traveling to the mine, and BNSF Railway crews were expected to clea
The Lampson TransiLift LTL 1100, the type that collapsed at Black Thunder, is not even the largest of the Lampson cranes, much less the largest crane in the World. It’s rated at 1,100 tons. Lampson makes the second largest crawler crane in the world, the LTL 2600, 2,600 tons capacity. There are three of them in existence – two in Australia, one in the U.S., and one under construction for China.
The largest crawler crane is the CC8800-TWIN built by Terex-Demag, of which there is one so far (in Saudi Arabia), and consists of two of its CC8800-1 model rated at 1,763 tons twinned to 3,527 tons.
DeepSouth Crane’s VersaCrane, also a crawler, is rated at 2,500 tons. The company is reported to be building a 4,000 ton VersaCrane.
BNSF was showing a video of this crane being moved across the tracks this past week. They had to build up a roadway between the mains and than put in temporary bridges across the tracks. interesting to see the amount of construction needed to move the crane from one side of the tracks to the other.
The Casper Star Tribune shows a picture of the move in the top photo, it shows the crane crawling across the tracks on one of the temp bridges they installed.
This accident happened well after the move as i think they moved the crane a few months ago.
IINM wasn’t a Lampson (built and operated) crane involved in the Milwaukee stadium collapse a few years ago? That was a total structural failure of the crane with multiple fatalities. I wonder if this accident will point to any inherent flaws in Lampson’s designs?
The crane that collapsed lifting roof sections of the Milwaukee Brewer’s Stadium was a Lampson Transilift LTL 2100. Cause of the collapse was concluded to be exceeding the crane’s load rating and excessive wind speed.
Lampson has had no difficulty that I am aware of attracting business nor obtaining liability insurance.
I’m certain you are correct about that but given that in the Milwaukee case the machine involved was both built and operated by Lampson (the paid out a very large settlement) I wonder if this is a similiar event?
Mammoet is another crane rental/heavy lifting firm that builds their largest cranes in-house (as does Deepsouth) and I can’t find any reference to those companies having similar issues…
What I see is two data points, one that the U.S. Government attributed to wind and overload, and mentioned nothing about design. Is that enough to establish a significant and meaningful trend? There’s a plethora of reports on the Milwaukee accident on-line. I didn’t see anything in the reports that indicate an error in design or fabrication of the crane, but if you plow into them and find it from an unbiased source, please bring it up.
I looked online and you are correct…However note that in the Milwaukee incident the crane was also being OPERATED by Lampson. There are a very small number of the large Lampson built cranes in operation worldwide and yet they have had two major accidents in 9 years? I believe