Bottrop – On Tuesday morning after Pentecost, the final phase of the project began with the dismantling of the first old pipe bridge segment over the River Emscher using the fully prepared crawler crane.

At the same time, the first new bridge segment was being loaded onto SPMT transport modules positioned on the motorway at the logistics area.

By Thursday morning, four old concrete pipe bridge segments—each weighing up to 240 tonnes and spanning 54 meters—had been dismantled and replaced by two new steel bridge segments, each weighing 220 tonnes and measuring 71 meters in length. The dismantled bridge elements were transported toward the logistics area, where they were lifted from the motorway down onto the handling site by the crawler crane stationed there.

In parallel, the project also deployed two 250-tonne telescopic mobile cranes, one 450-tonne, and one 100-tonne telescopic mobile crane to install steel structures and remove concrete pillars from the old bridge during dismantling.

But the work didn’t stop there.

In a final step during the 10-day motorway closure, WASEL’s 1,000-tonne crawler crane had to be dismantled once again, transported back to the logistics area, and reassembled. This final project milestone was also completed successfully!

“The detailed planning, calculations, and well-thought-out logistics concept proved successful,” says Viktor Hein, WASEL’s project manager.