Report - Inchgreen Drydock Crane, Glasgow, June 2010

[BenCooper]

Inchgreen drydock in Greenock is still an active site - currently leased to BAE Systems, it was last used to assemble a giant floating dock for Faslane naval base. It also once played host to the Queen Elizabeth liner - it's a pretty big dock :)

The dock has three goose-necked level-luffing cranes - one of them made by Sir William Arrol, so of course that's the one I went for (plus, it's the biggest). This took two trips - first time, with no harness, I wasn't going to attempt to get to the end. Second time, success...

It's a bit of a slog to the end - a hundred steps up to the cab level, then two hundred steps up to the top, then another hundred down to the end of the jib - most of it very exposed with bugger-all to clip in to. Fun, though

 

[BenCooper]

Re: Inchgreen Drydock Crane

So I realised I had been a bit lazy and a bit of a wuss for not doing the other two cranes - there's so few cranes left on the Clyde it seems a shame to miss any out. I thought these would be worse than the first one because they're open lattice, but with the boom at a more sensible angle they were actually really nice to climb. It was blowing a gale, though, so hard to get really sharp pictures...

On the second one, got to the top platform to find it wasn't there - just a couple of girders with some scraps of rusty steel hanging from them. Wasn't going to stand on that, so sat on the top steps of the ladder itself...

 

[BenCooper]

Re: Inchgreen Drydock Crane

Some old pictures that turned up - firstly the drydock under construction. Spot the bloke on a ladder giving an idea of scale :)

Next an artist's impression, done, I think, before the dock was built.

Finally, a picture of the dock in use. At least I assume this is Inchgreen - the cranes don't look quite right, though.