This special crane is a Spacelift® 1250-6S, made by Spacelift from Nederhorst ten Berg (NL) and owned by Zwagerman from the same town.

The idea to create this crane arised from the wish to have a crane that can work on very narrow building sites. Because this specific building site was directly beside a railway a normal crane with rotating ballast couldn’t be used. That is why this combination of an Effer 1250-6S with an 4S jib and a tracked carrier was built. The Effer 1250 is a crane with a lifting capacity of about 92 ton/mtr. It has, with jib, an outreach of 27,3 meter. More interesting for this crane though, is the lifting capacity of the jib on shorter distances. For instance at a height of 20 meter and an outreach of 9 meter the jib can still lift 8 tons. This is very important for cramped building sites because a lot of lifts there are at heights and with the jib.

The tracked carrier and the crane are driven by a 340 hp Caterpillar engine that is mounted at the front. The undercarriage has 2 widths. The large one is set here, this means a total width of 5,3 meters. This way the crane is stable without using any extra ballast. At this side the oiltank is mounted.

If the tracks are set to the small width (3 meters total width) the crane has to be ballasted with 10 tons of extra ballast. This 10 ton is divided in 4 blocks, 2 are hanging at both sides besides the oiltank. 2 others can be mounted above the tracks.

The space in the tracks is also filled with ballast to get more stability. The own weight is about 40 tons, with ballast this is almost 50 tons. Transportlength is 6,5 meter and transportheight is 3,6 meter.

Here we see the engine. To set the tracks to the small width, they are rotated to the front. The hydraulic engines of the tracks then end up before the engine.

This is the ballast. The 2 blocks are mounted at the oil tank. The 2 plates are mounted above the tracks.

And here is also the 4x extending jib.