Olympic weight lifting for Weldex

Contractors are racing against time to complete the infrastructure for this year's London 2012 Olympic Games, as Scottish crane company Weldex can attest. The company was called on to supply a Liebherr LR 11350 crawler crane to assist in the construction of a cable car service over the River Thames when plans changed.

The LR 11350 was used to erect the last and largest of the pylons to support the cable car system. The south tower, 90 metres tall and weighing 568 tonnes, was installed in the river 80 m from the bank.

Originally, a large mobile crane was to assemble the pylon but the the subsoil on the bank of the Thames was insufficient to hold the crane. A 120 m reach requirement meant that a significantly bigger machine had to be brought in. The 1,350 tonne capacity LR 11350 lifted pylon segments weighing up to 71 tonnes and placed them on a foundation in the Thames.

The cable car system will connect the Millennium Dome, the Olympic Games facility in Greenwich on the south side of the river, to the Sports Arena at the Royal Victoria Docks to the north of the Thames. It is designed to transport up to 2,500 passengers an hour.