Locomotive

The challenge

Prangl’s speciality: Transporting rail vehicles

Due to the demolition of a railway bridge in Linz and the resultant gap in the Mühlkreisbahn railway network, it was necessary to transport an 80 ton locomotive by road. It was required at Ottensheim station as a traction engine for a measurement carriage of the ÖBB (Austrian Federal Railway). As the specialist in transporting rail vehicles, this was just the right task for Prangl.

Our solution

Tandem lifting with a 350-tonne and a 160-tonne telescopic crane

The 19.7 metre long, 2.9 metre wide and 4.3 metre high diesel locomotive was tandem-lifted and loaded by a 350-tonne and a 160-tonne telescopic crane. Such manoeuvres always require perfect coordination on the part of both crane operators. The well-practised Prangl team delivered outstanding work in this regard. The rail behemoth was ultimately transported by a 4-axle heavy haulage tractor unit and a 9-axle semi-low-loader. This resulted in transport dimensions of 28.5 metres long and 5.5 metres wide. The entire transport rig weighed in at 133.2 tons.

Load securing with special transport device

To make sure that the load was perfectly secured, a transportation device was specially fabricated and fastened to the trailer. Using this device, it will also be possible to transport ÖBB narrow-gauge tracks by road in the future. In addition to these technical preparations, it was of course also essential to perform a careful route survey and it was accordingly necessary to approach a number of roundabouts and traffic light sets extremely precisely with a load of these dimensions. As a result of the detailed pre-planning and the qualified experts from Prangl, a number of costly traffic measures could be avoided.

Perfect transportation of the abnormal load thanks to know-how

Once at the destination station in Ottensheim, the locomotive was unloaded carefully by the same two telescopic cranes to complete its assignment there. After completing the ÖBB route survey, the experienced Prangl team was required again: The locomotive was loaded up again and transported back to its point of origin in the same way, i.e. by road and without incident.