Four Thousand Miles of Transportation Engineering
The below story originally appeared in two parts, published in Transportation Engineer in 1977. This shipment supported the original construction of the Fermi II Nuclear Plant in Newport, MI. The Port of Monroe was the import location for these original components and has sourced additional components to support the plant since.
Part 1: Floating over Britain’s Bridges
The challenge for Robert Wynn and Sons Limited: Several ”uncrossable” bridges stood between the biggest generator ever made in Britain and Mammoet Shipping’s HAPPY RIDER, which was to transport it to America
known as Andy Mylenek’s baby or ”GEC’s big baby,” it is the largest generator ever manufactured in Great Britain. Detroit Edison Company ordered it for their Enrico Fermi nuclear plant near Monroe, Michigan.
Edison sent Anderson R. Mylenek of their purchasing department to Stafford, England to work with the manufacturer, GEC Turbine Generator Limited during the 1215-megawatt baby gestation.
Birth records list its sex as AC and its weight as over 600 tons. (Tons mentioned in this article are short tons) it could be shipped in four pieces, the heaviest item, the stator frame, weighs 348 ½ tons. The rotor, which fits inside the stator, weighs 177 tons. At each end of the stator are 42 ½ ton cooler enclosures containing pipes through which cold water flows, cooling hydrogen gas, which in turn, cools many of the working parts through the generator.
GEC contracted with Robert Wynn and Sons Limited, whose main office is in Newport, Wales, to move all four components from Stafford to Manchester, the English inland seaport sixty-five miles north of Stafford. The rotor and cool enclosures presented little challenge to Wynns, who since 1863 have made “impossible” moves in many parts of the world.
But the stator presented a worthy challenge. It would be the heaviest load ever moved over a substantial distance in great Britan. Measuring 36 feet 6 inches long, 13 feet 3 inches high and 16 feet wide, the stator would wipe out fixed obstacles along the railroad right of way between Stafford and Manchester. Wynns must use the highway, but the highway contains 19 small uncrossable bridges. Fortunately, wynns has an ideal bridgecrossing transporter, a 392-ton capacity, 14-axle, 112-wheel double swan trailer made by Nicolas industries of Auxerre, France, famous for their minimum dead-weight transporters. Even so, many of the bridges might not stand the stress that would be caused, first by the Nicolas’s forward bogie and then by its aft bogie. It might be impossible to “wynn” the battle of the bridges.
Nevertheless, an overhead crane in the GEC plant loaded the stator onto timbers placed between the steel beams of the Nicolas’s side-beam bed. The bed was suspended between the Nicolas’s forward and aft bogies. Two 10-wheel tractors, one fore and one aft, powered the trailer and stator toward the first bridge- the weakest one of all- just a tenth of a mile away.
The rig stopped just short of the bridge. The rear tractor uncoupled and backed away- an apparent gesture of admitted defeat- but actually the gathering crowd was about to see something new in transportation engineering.
A large enclosed truck called a blower vehicle took the place of the rear tractor. Inside the vehicle four air compressors forced air through ducts that protruded over the vehicles cab and connected with similar ducts on the trailer’s rear bogie. The trailer’s ducts angled downward into an air chamber under the stator between the bed’s vertically broadside beams.
The top of the chamber was formed by a rectangular tarpaulin-like fabric that hung horizontally under the stator like a safety net under a trapeze artist. Beneath the rectangular fabric, a weighted flexible skirt hung vertically below all four sides of the side-beam bed on which the stator rested. The bottom of the chamber was the pavement itself. When the compressed air reached the chamber, the rectangular fabric puffed up like an air supported roof, and minute dust storms appeared on the pavement around the outer edge of the flexible skirt.
The onlookers heard the rush of air and saw the dust storms. They were familiar with the hovercrafts that speed across the English Channel, floating not on water but on air. They realized that the same principle – blower and flexible skirt – was forming an air cushion under the stator. And they understood that the cushion would spread the weight of the load over a wide area, lessening the weight that would bear down on the bridge at any one time. (the bridge, the forward bogie, the side-beam and the rear bogie are each about the same length.) word passed among the onlookers that this application of an air cushion is called Hoverlift, that it was provided by the British government’s CEGB (Central Electricity Generating Board) and that the British Hovercraft Corporation was operating it for CEGB (???????)
As the crowd watched the dust storms, it saw the skirt’s skid plates start to slide along the pavement. The forward bogie’s 56 tires rolled across the bridge. The skirt’s skid plates slid across. The rear bogie’s 56 tires rolled across.
It was a rolling, sliding success. The rear tractor replaced the blower vehicle. The skirt’s built-in hydraulic system lifted the skirt from the pavement and stowed it in pleats under the bed. The bridge crossing – including switching and reswitching the rear tractor and blower vehicle – had taken 15 minutes.
Nor did the rig have any problems on the open road or on the remaining 18 bridges. Four days after leaving the plant, it rolled onto Manchester’s Pomona docks.
The rotor and cooler enclosures, aboard other Wynns transporters, easily made the trip to Manchester.
GEC had contracted with Mammoet Shipping Company of Amsterdam, Holland, to carry the generator from Manchester, England, to Monroe, Michigan, USA. Mammoet sent their newest heavy-equipment motorship, the Happy Rider, to Manchester. It has a stern ramp for roll-on/roll-off operations, but the water at Pomona Docks is not deep enough to allow it to ballast down to level its ramp with the dock.
However, the Happy Rider has two derricks, one on the starboard side and one centerlined just aft of the ship’s superstructure. Working together, they might lift the stator aboard – provided the lift didn’t cause the ship to exceed an allowed 10-degree list. As the derricks lifted the stator over the port side, the Happy Rider listed 9.8 degrees.
To facilitate loading, the happy rider has sectional, removable decks aft of its superstructure. Its crew had placed the rotor on the starboard side of the deck immediately below the roll-on/roll-off deck. Then they had replaced the portion of the ro/ro deck over the rotor. They placed the stator and cooler enclosures on the ro/ro deck, the stator on the port side and the cooler enclosures on the starboard side. Then they replaced the weather (main) deck to protect the stator and cooler enclosures.
After the four components were secured, the Happy Rider cast off and serenely sailed out the Manchester Ship Canal – like the last scene of a travelogue.
But it was not the last scene of the story. The Happy Rider must sail across the Atlantic and through the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Port of Monroe. Then, Laramie, Inc., of Detroit would write the last, exciting chapter. This story will be carried in a future issue.
Part II: Six miles – As the Crow Flies
If you read Part I, “Floating over Britain’s bridges,” in the July issue of TRANSPORTATION ENGINEER, you will recall that we left the biggest generator ever made in Great Britain as it was leaving England. It was the sole cargo of Mammoet Shipping Company’s heavy-equipment motorship, the Happy Rider, which was proceeding out the Manchester ship canal toward the Atlantic Ocean.
Ship and generator travelled across the Atlantic and through the St. Lawrence Seaway to Monroe, Michigan, on the western shore of Lake Erie. Monroe is the closest deepwater port to the generator’s destination, the $914-million Enrico Fermi Unit No. 2 nuclear plant, scheduled for completion in 1980. The plant is the joint venture of the Detroit Edison Company, which has an 80% interest, and two Michigan cooperatives.
When the Happy Rider’s crew secured their ship to the Port of Monroe’s wharf, the generator’s four components were only six miles – as the crow flies – from the Fermi plant. But it would take a lot of crows to fly the 348-½ ton stator. Or the 177-ton rotor. Or even the two endpieces, the 42 ½-ton cooler enclosures. Furthermore, both the stator and the rotor were too heavy to be hauled over local roads. And the water route to the plant was much too shallow for the ship’s 14-plus-foot draft.
But a viable transporting plan had evolved long before the happy rider docked at Monroe. The manufacturer, GEC Turbine Generators Limited (better known as English Electric) of Stafford, England had asked Detroit’s Laramie, Inc., a member of the heavy specialized carriers conference, to supply men, machines, and know-how. Don Laramie, president, and Art Ryke, transportation manager, led the Laramie team which for four months prior to the ship’s arrival planned how their company could best perform its part of the job. The Laramie team’s primary goal was safety.
The Happy Rider’s weather deck (main deck) and its ro/ro (roll-on/roll-off) deck are sectional and removable. The stator and the two cooler enclosures were secured on the ro/ro deck, which is the first deck below the weather deck. The rotor was secured on the third deck. To facilitate unloading, the crew had removed the weather deck as they neared Monroe. The ship has two derricks, one centerlined just aft of the superstructure and facing the stern, the other at the starboard quarter and facing the port side. The centerlined derrick off-loaded the cooler enclosures. They were hauled to the Fermi plant on two of Laramie’s 50-ton Talbert lowboys by two of their R-700 Mack tractors. But the stator remained on the ro/ro deck – moving it would involve the ro/ro capabilities.
Aided by her twin screws and her bow thruster, the Happy Rider swung her bow 90 degrees and pressed her stern flat against the wharf. By slowly backing down on both engines, she maintained this backward-perpendicular-to-shore position. Port and starboard lines extending obliquely from amidships further steadied her as she lowered her stern ramp onto the wharf. Because of the ramp’s thickness it would be impossible to run a vehicle onto it from the wharf. Therefore four ironwood mats, four feet wide by 16 feet long, were placed side by side longitudinally (and supported with cribbing) to make a gradual grade from the wharf to the ramp’s rolling surface.
Ray Palarchio, one of Laramie’s most skilled drivers, peered into his side-view mirror at the image of the ramp toward which his rig’s 74 wheels were backing. The first 32 wheels to go up the ramp belong to Laramie’s 200-ton capacity Talbert dolly. The next 32 belong to their 250-ton-capacity Talbert hydraulic gooseneck trailer. The last 10 belong to a Mack DM-800 tractor that Mack Truck Inc. modified for Laramie to haul another rig, their famous 4100M, a 4100W Manitowoc upper works on a Goldhofer THP 7 transport. Powered by a 335 Cummins, the Mack has five reverses and is capable of 52 forward gear combinations. Palarchio stopped the rig just before the dolly reached the stator – leaving just enough room in front of the tractor to allow the ship to raise its ramp.
When the ramp was up, the ship once again docked with its port side to the wharf. Laramie’s 60-ton Manitowoc truck crane lifted material from the wharf to a working crew on the ro/ro deck to help the men prepare the rig to receive the stator. The men guided blocking lengthwise onto the aft portion of the trailer and onto the entire dolly. Then they guided steel beams crossways onto the blocking. Finally, they placed two-inch ironwood softeners on top of the steel beams.
The happy rider’s two derricks lifted the stator from ironwood blocking that had acted as a buffer between the ro/ro deck and stator. The blocking was removed and Palarchio backed the rig until the softeners on the steel beams were directly under the support pads. The derricks lowered the stator onto the trailer and dolly. After being lashed to the rig, the stator was ready for the road.
The “road” was a flat deck cargo barge supplied by the American Shipbuilding Company of Chicago, Illinois. It waited just aft of the stern ramp. Mud mats covered the portion of its deck on which the rig and stator would rest.
The happy rider’s ramp lowered onto the barge’s deck, but the end of the lowered ramp was about 20 feet short of the portion of the deck containing the mud mats. A bridge consisting of five longitudinal steel sheets reinforced with I-beams spanned the gap from the end of the ramp to the mats. As a final precaution before moving the rig and stator, cribbing was placed under the bridge.
Palarchio inched the rig forward. The ship’s push-button-operated ballasting pumps started to shift water from the aft compartments to the forward compartments. A winch on the ship’s superstructure grudgingly played out a taut safety line that was secured to the back of the barely moving dolly. The rig crept over the ramp, over the bridge, and on to the mud mats. Two portable pumps on the barge’s deck pumped water out of the barge’s hull and shot it over the side. The safety cable was removed from the dolly. The rig and stator had been moving so slowly that it was difficult to tell they had stopped. Palarchio earned half a day’s wages during his ship to barge ride. Cables and turnbuckles lashed the dolly, the trailer, and the stator itself to the barge’s cleats and bitts. Hydraulic jacks jammed between the barge’s deck and the understructures of the trailer and dolly took the weight off the tires, and removed the danger of the stator rocking on the rig in case Lake Erie should act eerily. Two tugboats undocked the barge and headed her into the river raisin. The J. R. Sprankle, owned by Martran Company of Flat Rock, Michigan, towed. The West Wind, owned by Shepard Marine Construction Company of Mt. Clemens, Michigan, pushed, as the armada traveled two miles out the river to Lake Erie. The tugs maintained the same positions in the lake as they moved through eight miles of open water. Lake Erie behaved beautifully.
Just before they reached a dredged open-water channel about 1,500 yards from the Fermi slip, the Sprankle’s towline was cast off from the barge, and the barge was turned completely around. The Sprankle stood by while the West Wind pushed the backwards facing barge through the channel and into the slip. The tugs’ safety-conscious captains had taken more than three hours to make the trip.
Much of the silt had been dredged from the slip, and two of the Happy Rider’s deck sections had been lowered until they rested flat on the slip’s bottom. Protective ironwood mats (heavy enough to sink) had been lowered onto the deck sections.
As the two portable pumps flooded the barge’s aft compartments, it became apparent why the barge had been backed into the slip. The aft portion of the barge’s bottom – flatter than the bow portion of her bottom – sank until it rested securely on the flat ironwood mats that covered the sunken deck sections.
The same bridge over which the rig had rolled from the ship’s ramp to the barge’s mud mats was placed from the barge’s stern onto the shore.
Palarchio effortlessly backed his heavily laden rig onto the shore. He turned it around and drove it three quarters of a mile to the Fermi’s turbine room where a 425-ton P&H overhead crane placed the rig’s well-traveled load onto temporary cribbing. Palarchio maneuvered the empty rig back onto the barge, which then returned to the happy rider. The ro/ro deck sections over the rotor had been removed. The ship was turned 180 degrees and its starboard side was moored to the wharf. The tug nudged the barge against the ship’s port (unloading) side. The ship’s derricks lifted the rotor horizontally through the hole in the ro/ro deck, swung it over the barge and lowered it directly onto the trailer and dolly. From that point on, the rotor’s trip to Fermi’s turbine room was almost identical to the stator’s.
Don Laramie awarded the entire operation his highest compliment. “It was,” he said, “spectacularly uneventful.”