Street Crane lifts major railway project

A 40t double girder Goliath crane on London’s Oxford Street, which has been in service for three months, is the 10th Street Crane installation on the Crossrail project, a new railway being built in southeast England.

The crane will be lifting spoil skips and lowering tunnel segments and other pre-cast elements for the Crossrail tunnel and new Tottenham Court Road Western Ticket Hall.

The double girder box beam design has twin custom built TVX hoists, each capable of lifting 20t. Twin hoists give maximum flexibility as they can be used singly or in tandem depending on the weight and geometry of the load.

The crane has a total height of lift of 37m with a maximum normal speed of 15m per minute and a minimum 1.5 m/m. Hoist speed can be boosted to 23 m/m for light loads of 2t or less. A cab located on the crane bridge will give the driver clear visibility of the site.

Large ground beams, 1.5m deep, have been cast 31m apart on which the rails for the Goliath crane legs run. The crane spans the beams and has an additional 5.1m cantilever at one end so that spoil skips can be offloaded onto awaiting trucks that are outside the protected excavation area. The rectangular frame legs of the Goliath crane at the cantilever end have been designed to permit the passage of the skips between them.

Elsewhere on the Crossrail development more cranes from Street are in use. Six 10t single girder cranes are used in the tunnel segment casting shops for de-moulding and transportation of the cast segments. In the curing yards three rail running Goliath cranes of a fully weatherproof specification are used for placement of the tunnel segments and subsequent retrieval after they have matured to full strength.