Saturday, November 24, 2012

Genoa Cranes

Genoa, Italy.  Taken from the car as we traveled north out of the city.




6 comments:

  1. Old cranes! Now there is a subject near and dear to my heart. It's gotten to the point I'm afraid to post any more crane photos, but business is always picking up with cranes.

    I'm happy to see your post as it is your first in over two weeks. Hope this dry spell was due to all good reasons.

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  2. There may be a better, more descriptive term for these cranes, used to lift containers to and from ships...perhaps you know.

    Travel, company, more travel and more company has been the distraction the past couple of months. Got some catching up to do!

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    1. There are number of different kinds of cranes, but the two most common are boon cranes and gantry cranes. I think the ones in your photo are boon cranes. They can be used to load and unload containers, but most container ports use gantry cranes which have a horizontal bean over the ship to lift containers up and then horizontally over the quay where a trailer truck waits to receive them. The largest gantry cranes now can lift up to six containers at a time with a capacity of 1000-2000 tons. Most gantry cranes that lift a single container are rated around 65 tons.

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    2. Good! Glad to know they are all still called cranes. Thanks!

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    3. That would be boom cranes, not "boon." Sometimes fingers don't go where they should on a keyboard. The truly giant gantry cranes are built to load and unload the largest container freighters which can be up to 22 containers wide.

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    4. With anticipatory, fill-in spelling features combined with tiny mobile screens its not always a matter of our fingers not hitting the right keys. Thanks, as always, for the lesson with your comment...always interesting and informative.

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