Alliance Mar 24 (Esco a/w)

News

Digging deep into construction machinery news

DEMAG’s Down a Bridge (#FlashbackFriday)

by Nick Drew  |  Fri 06 May 2022

DEMAG’s Down a Bridge (#FlashbackFriday)

Dirk’s father took this series of photos back in 1990. They document the demolition of an old bridge which crossed the A46 autobahn in Düsseldorf.

The demolition which was being undertaken by contractor H&N Brücke, commenced on a Sunday morning at 6.00am, as the structure was brought down in a controlled explosion.

The structure fell onto a bed of pre laid sand, more or less remaining in one piece. Several DEMAG excavators were deployed to break it down in smaller parts, which the assembled loaders would be able to handle.

Machines assembled to tackle the job included a cable crane DEMAG B410 LCB with demolition ball, hydraulic excavators consisted of DEMAG H31, H41 and H51, while a combination of tracked and wheeled loaders included the massive CAT 983 traxcavator, CAT 950E and CAT 966C wheeled loaders.

In a sign of the times there were no hydraulic shears, munchers or pulverisers and no hydraulic quick-couplers to be seen.

DEMAG excavators were in those days very popular for demolition work as they were considered to be extremely robust and certainly up to the task in hand.

At this location they were actually working only a few kilometres away from the old DEMAG factory in Düsseldorf.

Apparently by the afternoon everything was pushed aside and the motorway was able to be re-opened again.

The Digger Man Blog would like to thank Dirk for sharing this latest batch of old photos, which I know from the messages I get are very well received and much appreciated.

Loads more