Bau-Trans: Trimodal heavy lift logistics for “power plant relocation”
More than ten years ago, a gas-fired power plant was planned in the eastern Hungarian town of Vásárosnamény. However, it was not built, although essential components such as turbine and stator had already been delivered. Now the heavy components were sold to the Middle East. The contract for the special transport and crane work was awarded to the Bau-Trans site in Hungary.
“Our task was to load the power plant components onto the transport equipment and transport them to the provisional intermediate storage yard in Belgrade,” reports András Czibik, Branch Manager of Bau-Trans Budapest. Behind this lies a complex logistical challenge with around 100 special transports on rail, road and inland waterways as well as numerous cranes.
The heaviest components were a 196-tonne turbine and a 148-tonne unit. The turbine had its starting point in Lőrinci and reached the railway connection 200 meters away with a low loader with hydraulically controllable axle lines. The stator in Vásárosnamény was also loaded and transported to the nearby railroad track.
For the transhipment of the turbine to the low-loader railroad car, a mobile crane with a maximum payload of 450 tons was used. The stator was loaded onto another rail vehicle for heavy cargo by means of a hydraulic jack and a displacement track. It was followed by a rail load in the about 450 kilometers southwest of Vásárosnamény located Paks.
There arrived, followed by another transhipment of both components by means of mobile crane on a low loader with tractor. Then it continued on the road for a few hundred yards – to the quay in Paks. There the heavy goods for water transport to Belgrade were once again transhipped to a barge.
“Thanks to their smaller dimensions, we were able to transport an additional 81 cargoes directly from Vásárosnamény and Lőrinci to Belgrade, about 500 kilometers to the south. 17 cargoes were transported by road to the harbor in Budapest and shipped to Belgrade on the Danube,” says András Czibik, explaining the transport project. In addition there were 174 strokes for “normal loads”, which were transported by the client himself to Belgrade.
