Mobile Cranes - a confession

[although I enjoyed compiling it ;-D]

I'm working near a building site, and they're putting up one of those steel framed buildings.

Key to all this are cranes - mobile, self-propelled cranes - normally, they're the ones you seen driving around your Town Centre.

However, every so often, you come across a real monster.

One that needs a smaller crane just to hang the weights on the back.

One with 7 or 8 axles.

One that puts up the tower cranes - maybe one with cantilevers or a lattice frame on the end, to give extra distance & height

I'm strangely fascinated by them, and I rue the demise of Jim'll Fix it -- which might have given me the chance to drive one -- to take a day out going to site, setting it up, extending the pneumatic legs, lots of shouting, laying the cargo down where it's needed... [hopefully!]

Perhaps there could be a Diggerland for cranes?

I've found some really fantastic links:

• Liebherr Mobile cranes
• Liebherr Tracked crane with whopping capacity
• Liebherr monster self-propelled crane - 1200 metric tonnes
• You can even buy die-cast models, but they seem a little pricey at €451!

Ainscough is the name that comes to mind with mobile cranes. Check out their video

Maybe it's because as a child I had a yellow dinky toy of a Coles Crane, which actually had a hook and string...

I've also come across a further Liebherr link, which reminds me of tower crane crawling itself up the old Britannic House just off Moorgate [not that tropical view below] - a geet red thing with a self-assembling block below it.

This block got the pieces lifted into it by the crane itself, then jacked itself up from the new bit to create the next space - true self-assembly, and pretty impressive!