FIRST NEW RAILWAY CRANE SINCE 1990 AROUSES INTEREST IN NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES

21.10.2019

The modern Multi Tasker has conquered yet another country. A full 30 years after delivery of the last EDK 500, Uzbekistan‘s state-owned railway company “Uzbekiston Temir Yollari” (UTY) will begin operating a KRC 1200 from Kirow in the first quarter of 2020. The Uzbek railway, which currently operates a total of 19 EDKs, has thus confirmed its confidence in the Kirow crane. The crane will serve as a rescue crane on the newly built Angren – Pap railway line. The new main line connects the densely populated region of Central Asia‘s Fergana Valley with the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. The mountainous operating area, which includes a 19-km-long tunnel, posed a special challenge during the selection process. As well as being mobile and flexible, the new crane must also have a high load capacity and a short rigging time. The KRC 1200 can lift 150 tonnes at a radius of seven metres and slew sideways by up to 30° with the conical counterweight retracted, without interfering with the clearance gauge. The counterweight remains on the crane even during transport by train, which means the KRC 1200 can be made ready for operation at the scene of an accident within a very short time. Once the operators had been trained and all technical requirements confirmed during customer acceptance, it was time to celebrate with friends. Railway workers from other countries with a track gauge of 1,520 mm were invited to a customer day – after all, the crane is the third Multi Tasker in use on Russian tracks. Many railway workers from Eastern Europe seized this unique opportunity to talk shop with colleagues and get to know this state-of-theart railway crane, albeit with a certain amount of envy. The Lithuanian railway also reported on the first five years of operation of its two KRC 1600s, and other customers have already announced their own plans for the renewal of their railway crane fleets. The rigging time is a major issue for rescue cranes. The EDKs that have proven themselves over decades need at least one hour for this. The Multi Tasker does not necessarily have to be supported for every application, however if necessary, the supports can be hydraulically extended from the cab. According to the stopwatch, the KRC 1200 can be made ready for use in just two minutes. Another highlight in the customer‘s itinerary was a tour of Deutsche Bahn‘s emergency management system. The visitors had a close look at the various DB rescue trains and took away some ideas for improvement.