Late October’s transport of a 150-tonne transformer involved Bau-Trans’s Assembly Logistics and Transport Services Departments as well as ITB (International Flatbed Rail Transports). Its route led from Bassecourt (CH) to Bickingen in the region of Berne. One of the special features of this transport was the adaptation of the deployed lifting bridge to serve as a transformer bridge.
The premiere transformer transport by means of lifting bridge originated at the Bassecourt transformer station in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. There the nine-metre transformer was hooked up to the charge carriers of a twelve-axle flatbed railway car supplied by Felbermayr’s ITB Department.
A 120-kilometre railway journey to Berne followed. There the voltage transformer weighing in at 150 tonnes was lifted from the railway car by means of a mobile crane and hooked up to the charge carriers of the lifting bridge.
Bau-Trans’s project manager Ingo Müller: “To complete the transport as cost-efficiently as possible its holding device was adapted for the beams of a vessel bridge to allow it to be hooked up to the upper part of the lifting lever.”
According to Müller, this allowed for the transformer to be lifted and lowered during transport. Thus equipped the transformer could, for instance, be lifted over barriers when negotiating corners.
Two Mercedes Actros units with more than 600 bhp each were used for as pusher and puller machines. The load journey of several hours was accompanied by numerous traffic guidance measures. Among other things, signal systems had to be removed and the load was raised several times to overcome obstacles.
Once the cargo had reached Bickingen it was once again lifted using the lifting levers. “This allowed us to mount the castors to the underside of the transformer to put it on its foundations,” says Ingo Müller.