SYDNEY BRIDGE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3756, 9 March 1926, Page 86

SYDNEY BRIDGE.

MASSIVE MACHINERY. A TREMENDOUS CRANE. SYDNEY, February 25. While, much has to be done, and a small fortune has to be spent by the contractors in preliminaries before the real task of building the Sydney harbour bridge is commenced, the powor which i 3 gradually being harnessed on both sides of the harbour illustrates strikingly the immense work that is involved in this giant undertaking. There has just been installed, for example, for the purposes of the bridge, the largest single span crane in the world. It s daily job will be to lift weights up to 125 tons. The newest and heaviest type of locomotive engine, in Australia at all events—that in use on the Melbourne express—weighs 85 tons. Put together a locomotive of that type, and another locomotive of 40 tons, or 125 tons in all, and one gets an idea of the lifting capacity of this crane There are a few imposing cranes round the harbour now, but they will be only a circumstance against this colossus. In itself the crane is a tremendous weight, each girder scaling 36 tons. Its task will be to handle the larger component parts in the massive framework of the bridge. Everywhere, in the workshops at Milson’s Point, is the impress of massive power gradually being harnessed for the service of man and for what will, it is believed, ba one of the engineering triumphs of the world. In one corner,for instance, is a steel planing'machine, weighing about 100 tons, and 70ft in length. It is the largest machine of the kind in Australia. The eye catches another machine which has no less contempt for the hardness of steel. It is a shearing machine, which will cut through steel with ease. Looking with something of awe and humility at all this machinery, one begins to feel that man is not the important link in the scheme of things; in fact that without the power which the world is able to harness he would be an almost infinitesimal factor. Milson’s Point, as one sees it to-day, certainly inspires that train of thought.