If you have been in and out of London from the West in 2017 you could not have missed the humongous crane that was erected on the site of the old Earls Court Exhibition Centre. I was overjoyed when one of the contractors on site asked me to come and shoot their work which was to cut the foundation blocks for the crane to lift and disposed of. Average weight – 1500 tons per block and there were about 60 of them.
The crane is entirely containerised – the cab is a container, the counterweights are containers and so on, a giant meccano package that can be moved from site to site by ‘only’ 60 or 70 trucks.
The weather was fabulous so we managed to get some great shots of both the crane and the client’s wire saws in operation. Europe’s largest crane (for it is he) has now moved on, sadly.
The Earls Court space is to become a new residential village with hundreds of affordable flats, offices and retail units.