Pattje Shipyards is one of the shipyards in the northern part of Holland that belong to the Conoship-group. Because of an overcapacity in this area, they decided to sell Pattje’s shipyard in Waterhuizen (NL). The buildings are being let to others. The shipyard crane however didn’t had a function anymore. While the entire crane is riveted, it wouldn’t be easy to move it. So they decided to demolish it and transport it to a local scrap yard. The lifting part of the demolishing was done by Koekkoek from Assen (NL). Here you will see the demounting of the upper-structure of the crane.

On the first day that I came on the job site, they where still busy trying to burn through the connection between the upper-structure and the under-carriage. The Liebherr LTM1500 of Koekkoek was parked beneath the crane and is already connected to the upper-structure. In the foreground you can see some of the pieces that have already been demounted. That is the ballast and a part of the boom. On the left side you see small crane of KTC from Zuidbroek (a daughter-company of Koekkoek) with a worksmen-basket.

On this day the Koekkoek team didn’t had much succes. During a demolition job you mostly have to guess/calculate the weight of the parts. The weight of this part was estimated at about 55 - 65 tonnes. After some lifting attempts, they discovered that the part weighs in at a hefty 90 tonnes. Because the crane cannot lift such weights in this configuration, they decided to do a second attempt the next day.

The crane was equipped with 75 tonnes of ballast.

This is the ballasttruck for the LTM1500. It is a MAN 41.604 8x4 with a 6-axled Faymonville Cargomax ballasttrailer.

The LTM1500 was present again on the second day, but this time it was equipped with a superlift attachment. The superlift was brought there with the above shown ballasttruck. In the foreground you can see the stuff that normally lies on the ballasttrailer.

This Krupp KMK6180, with 180 tonnes capacity, was used to equip the Liebherr with the superlift. The crane was parked to the right of the Liebherr. This crane also came in handy, when during the first lift of the Liebherr, they discovered that the load couldn’t be lowered savely because of the heavy wind.

This is the ballastruck that comes with the Krupp. It is a somewhat older Ginaf 10x4 which carries just the right amount of ballast for this crane. With this amount of ballast the Krupp can handle most of the jobs without any other equipment. The support plates, a collection of chaines and an extra hook are also part of the load.

After they moved the Krupp somewhat to the back, it is now attached to the front of the upper-structure. The Krupp isn’t lifting any of the load, it is just there to stabilize it.

Almost reached the ground. But, the load can’t be put on the ground at this side of the crane. It has to be put on the tracks of the shipyard crane, because it has 2 gears (for rotating the upper-structure) coming out of the bottom-side.

The under-carriage is standing in the way. Therefore they try to pull it away with the Ginaf. But it didn’t move an inch!!

So, if the under-carriage can’t be moved then the crane has to make a 270 degrees turn. The Krupp has layed it’s boom as flat as possible to make this manoeuvre possible.

During the turn the space between the superlift and the under-carriage was a little on the short-side. After adjsuting the boom the room was barely enough.

A more detailed view.

In the end the upper-structure lands on the place where they wanted it, on the tracks of the crane.