As many of you somewhat know me, you have also gathered my interest and fascination for Bridges.
I watched a rather interesting build of an extremely large bridge on an educational channel a while back. Not only did they build the whole Bridge off-site, the elaborate measures to move it, followed.
A Worldwide International Company was hired to lift the bridge, move it on-to the river and place it on two barges, somewhat makeshift connecting the two barges together. The room for error could not be a consideration.
This International Company moved it down the river (I do believe it was a canal) and put it in it’s permanent resting place.
That is a short gist of what I watched.
The bridge was built and sitting on a huge platform by the river. The international company came in and erected four towers on each corner of the bridge. They simultaneously jacked up the bridge with their four towers with cables, somewhat similar to lift Bridges.
They parked a series of custom hydraulic lift semi trailers under the bridge on both ends and set this multi-million pound Bidge in motion.
At a specific time in the morning, before the tide started to rise, they had to transfer this bridge from land to the barges. There was a problem halfway during the transfer, the tide was rising, the mid portions of the trailers were bottoming out.
This International Company thought of everything. This wasn’t their first rodeo. They not only had pumps to pump water out of the barges from which they started to make them rise, they also had pumps to pump water into the barges to make them sink as the tide came up.
To make a long story short they did get the bridge on the two barges, moved it down river and installed the bridge in place.
When they got to the resting place of the Bridge the Hydraulic semi trailers rose the bridge up, moved it into exact placement and dropped it down