1980’s Bridge Busting with Dirk Bömer

Our German friend Dirk Bömer is back again with another selection of historical photos from his extensive archive collection.

Around the mid-1980’s the famous A 3 autobahn which runs between Cologne and the Ruhr-Area was set to be widened from two to three lanes. To enable the road widening work to take place all the old bridges that ran over the existing road had to be demolished.

This operation was a mammoth task in itself, with the work taking place over several weekends.

Dirk tells us that the autobahn was closed very early on a Sunday morning, and the bridge structure was brought down by explosives that had been pre-set ahead of the operation.

In a familiar scenario, once brought down, the resulting debris had to be removed as fast as possible, to enable the road to be opened again in time for the Monday morning rush hour as people headed off for work.

The contractor undertaking this work was "Hesper Abbruch GmbH" who were based in Erkrath, where Dirk was living at the time. This contractor was very experienced in this kind of work, and had the machines and highly experienced personnel to tackle the job, in a safe, but fast manner.

Dirk was on hand to capture some of the work on camera. Hesper Abbruch GmbH brought in an arsenal of machines including DEMAG H36, Liebherr R 942, Liebherr R 912 with hydraulic breaker, HANOMAG 44 C wheeled loading shovel, and a Caterpillar 955L tracked shovel, the resulting concrete was loaded away on a fleet of M.A.N scow end dumptrucks.

We thank Dirk for sharing this latest batch of archive photos with us here on the Digger Man Blog.