While BLB is out helping man the barricades at the Park Lane fuel protest, those of us left behind back at base continue to provide the regular service. We didn't think you'd want to wait for these pictures of an (almost) extra-terrestrial heavy haulage job.
The Technik Museum at Speyer in south-west Germany is well known to CM as for a number of years it was the base for the famous 1000 Point Test. The exhibits there range from cars and bikes up to a massive Antonov AN-22 and, at the sister museum at nearby Sinsheim, a matching pair of Concorde and Tupolev TU-144.
The latest exhibit is, or has been, literally out of this world - the Russian BURAN (meaning snowstorm) space shuttle. It completed the last leg of a barge journey from Russia via the Rhine on road, on a 16-axle trailer behind a rather special Mercedes-Benz Actros from Kubler Spedition. The Titan-modified SLT 4160 8x6/4 has three drive axles and two steering, and is designed to operate at 500 tonne GCW.
The outfit was 48m long, with the BURAN itself measuring 36m long, by 9m high and wide, and weighing in at 70 tonnes with a rather high centre of gravity.
Our last encounter with Kubler Spedition was at the Speyer museum late one evening watching a steam railway engine being loaded onto a low-loader, as one of the Kubler bosses was borrowing it to put in his garden for his 60th birthday party.
...now THAT,S HEAVY HAULAGE!!!!!!!!
So happy to see Buran in such a great shape, all previous report were giving it rusted to death in some forgotten hangar...