To modernize the line, two railway bridges in Massy were removed and replaced by new units that will allow faster and more efficient trains that are used by a total of more than 1.5 million people.
For the project Sarens has used the SGC-90, also known as "Little Celeste", one of the largest electric ring cranes in the world, with a lifting capacity of up to 1,650 tons.
Thanks to the new infrastructure, which will greatly reduce noise and vibration, the comfort of local residents has been improved.
Sarens, world leader in heavy lifting, engineered transport and crane rental services, has helped modernize France's national rail network by replacing two bridges in Massy, 20 kilometers south of Paris. As part of the project, two century-old railway bridges, the Chartres Bridge for RER line B and the Gallardon Bridge for RER line C, weighing 468 tons each, were first dismantled and replaced with two new bridge segments.
The new bridges will allow the circulation of the most modern train models, the MI20 series, which are replacing the MI79 and MI84 models currently in service and will improve the service and comfort of the line thanks to their greater width in lines that are used by a total of more than 1.5 million people daily in the Paris metropolitan area.
For this operation, Sarens experts have decided to make use of the SGC-90 ring crane, also known as "Little Celeste", one of the largest models in the world, which uses electric power for its operation and has the capacity to lift up to 1,650 tons. Unlike the vast majority of cranes of its size, the SGC-90 can be plugged into the electrical grid and run at full capacity without the need for a traditional fuel source. The Little Celeste ring crane can even produce its own energy, recovering and reusing the electricity it generates each time a load is lowered. When connected to the national grid, it recovers all the energy produced and feeds it back, reducing energy consumption by up to 40%. In turn, because it runs on electricity, the SGC-90 crane is very quiet in its operations.
The installed bridge span is equipped with ballasted tracks, which, unlike the previous one, that were simply laid on metal rails, will greatly help to reduce vibrations and noise pollution. This will improve the comfort of local residents. The environmental impact of the work has been minimized, and a landscaping project was carried out with the planting of new trees at the end of the works.
This operation, which required a preparation time of over 2 years, was designed to minimize as much as possible the impact on rail traffic and the daily lives of local residents and road users. The modernization of the railway section was necessary as the bridges were showing signs of wear out and their renewal will contribute to improving the rail system and the quality of passenger transport.
The project consisted of two phases. In the first phase, Sarens worked on dismantling the two old bridges. For this purpose, Sarens’ engineering team lifted the two bridge sections and deposited them on a SPMT, which was used to drive them to the designated space for the dismantling and subsequent transfer to the scrapyard. In the second phase, the two new bridge sections were hoisted using the full carrying power of the Little Celeste, as these bridge sections weigh 1375T (Chartres Bridge) and 949T (Gallardon Bridge).
The SGC-90 arrived at the port of Rouen from Indonesia and was transported by road in 220 trucks to Massy in France. An AC100, an LR1200 and a CC2800 completed the assembly of the SGC-90 with a 100 m main boom configuration in eight weeks.
According to Dirk Vinck, project manager at Sarens, "Setting up the crane on the limited available surface was a challenge. The ground was prepared with mats to adjust the bearing pressure on the ground". "In order to maintain safety during the project, heavy rigging, with a total weight of 260T, was used to connect the old and new bridges to the crane hook," Vinck added.
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