Schares Deploys Enerpac JS-250 for Railway Bridges Installation

The speed and convenience of Enerpac jack-up technology for bridge projects was demonstrated recently by German heavy lift company, Autokrane Schares GmbH, during the installation of two 1000t railway bridges in the city of Herten in the Ruhr Valley, Germany.

Autokrane Schares was responsible for removing and replacing the old steel railway bridge over Kaiserstrasse in Herten. The bridge carries the double-track line between Gelsenkirchen Buer-Nord station and the Blumenthal junction, an important east-west connection through the Ruhr area.

Following removal of the existing steel bridge and replacement of the old abutments, the Enerpac JS-250 jack-up system was deployed to lift the bridges, one per track. Installing the new concrete bridges involved picking up each 1000t  bridge via two header beams. The beams rested on the Enerpac JS-250 jack-ups mounted on SPMTs, allowing the bridge to be lifted and transported.

The bridges, each measuring 42.3m long x 5.98m wide, were then transported at a height of around 3.8m. Once in front of the new abutments, the JS-250 system synchronously lifted the bridge a further 3.5m (including the header beams), taking the total lift to 7.8m above the road surface. The bridge was then moved, positioned above the abutment and manoeuvred into position, the final height adjustment made using the SPMTs.

“The whole operation went very smoothly, so much so that we completed the bridge installation one day quicker than planned,” says Tim Schlattmann, managing director, Autokrane Schares GmbH. “For most bridge projects, the speed and ease of use of the Enerpac JS-250 makes it our go-to lifting technology for final bridge installation.”

The Enerpac JS-Series jack-up system is a multi-point lifting system comprising four jack-up towers, one positioned under each corner of a load. The lifting frame of each jack-up tower contains four hydraulic cylinders, which lift and stack steel barrels. The load is lifted in increments as barrels are inserted via an automated system and stacked, forming the lifting towers. Managed by a single operator, each tower’s lifting and lowering operations occur simultaneously, while the jack-up’s synchronous technology maintains the balance of the load.