Rail-mounted gantry cranes are large overhead cranes that are designed to lift and carry extremely heavy loads. Instead of being mounted on rubber wheels like many gantry cranes, these cranes have metal wheels on the ends of their legs, much like a train car. This allows them to travel along a track that is affixed to the ground.
The metal wheels make the crane mobile while still providing enough support for extremely heavy loads. Cranes like these are usually reserved for heavy-duty outdoor applications, although they are also sometimes used indoors. Examples of some of the most common applications that rely on rail-mounted gantry cranes are listed below.
1. Container yards.
Shipping containers are large and can be quite heavy, depending on what they are carrying. Rail-mounted gantry cranes are frequently used in container yards for moving containers like these around.
The cranes are usually extremely large, spanning the width of multiple containers. They also are typically quite tall. In many cases, they can stack as many as six containers on top of one another. This allows them to create huge stacks of shipping containers, maximizing the space where the containers are stored.
Rail-mounted gantry cranes are also used for loading and unloading shipping containers from trains and trucks. In situations like these, they usually span a series of tracks and roadways. They can lift containers off of train cars onto nearby trucks or vice versa.
2. Shipbuilding applications.
Ships are not only large but they also are comprised of many heavy components. Rail-mounted gantry cranes are frequently used in the shipbuilding process. Cranes like these span the area where the ship is being built. They are used to place the different parts of the ship as it is constructed.
3. Mining applications.
Mining often involves moving very heavy materials around. Rail-mounted gantry cranes can make this process easier by handling all of the heavy lifting in a specific area. Thanks to their design, these cranes usually have extremely high lifting capacities, allowing them to handle even the heaviest materials with ease. They can improve both efficiency and productivity at the mining site, allowing more ore or other resources to be mined from the earth in less time.
4. Steel yards.
Items that are made out of steel such as beams and pipes are extremely heavy. Rail-mounted gantry cranes are frequently used to move these types of items around steel storage yards, stacking them for storage or loading them onto waiting vehicles.
These are some of the most common applications for rail-mounted gantry cranes. There are many other applications that they are used for as well. Essentially, any application that involves extremely heavy lifting in an outdoor environment is well suited to the use of one of these cranes.
Thanks to their overall design, cranes like these are capable of managing loads that would be too heavy for other types of cranes. That makes them a good choice for heavy-duty lifting applications, whether they are installed outdoors or inside of a building or other structure.