For over 30 years there has been a huge concrete foundation under the floor slab of a department store in Herne. It was rediscovered when the building was demolished. Since the foundation was above an underground railway tunnel, it was not possible to destroy it on site. Therefore, a 500-ton LTM 1500-8.1 mobile crane from the crane and heavy-duty transport specialist Autokrane Schares GmbH, based in Bocholt, was used to remove the foundation and place it in an open place, where it was then crushed with heavy machinery.
At the end of the 1980s, a huge slewing crane was erected on Bahnhofstrasse in Herne for the construction of a department store. A square concrete foundation with a side length of 5.5 meters and a depth of 1.4 meters ensured a firm footing. After the construction work was completed, the 104-tonne colossus was left under the floor slab of the building. When the department store was recently demolished, the foundation reappeared.
Normally the demolition company on site would have crushed it with hydraulic hammers. However, since it was located immediately above an underground train tunnel, this method simply wasn’t possible. This meant that a powerful mobile crane had to be brought to the construction site to completely remove the enormous foundation. Schares sent his Liebherr LTM 1500-8.1, which was then ballasted with 105 tons of counterweight at the location. The telescopic boom was extended to a length of 31.7 meters in order to lift out the foundation with a radius of 13 meters and put it in an open place where the demolition machines could finish the work.
