Construction. One.

Building Cross Rail-Elizabeth Line.

One must say that the use of the crane with telescopic or static has come to its fore, working in the tight spaces of bustling London! Most of the work being done in the capital was underground rather than later structures being build over tube stations to prove the value of land and property.

The crane has been around since man discovered we needed it to build, wither it was structures such as stone Henge to the ancient cities of the Middle-east and the great wall of China. The crane is the best was to lift heavy items, were as the pulley is more for the moving of local smaller weights.

Cross Rail and many other new underground ventures will be dominated by the crane, while the mobile telescopic has taken advantage of those 8x8 ICBM carriers for the odd and quick jobs?

Cranes. Part-One.

Ancient to Present.

The crane has been around as long as man has been on the Earth, Stone Henge in the United Kingdom, the Pyramids of Egypt and the Great wall of China could not have been constructed without some form of crane or pulling device.

Slaves and animals too played an essential part, because the people who designed and built these monuments where part of high society and part of powerful empires. Today we take the crane and various lifters for granted, not high rise can be built without them being built into the structure of the towers in New York, Dubai and London.

Today there are a variety of types available to do different types of lifting, some of this being the recovery of heavy loads or the moving over structures into confined spaces. This is were the telescopic cranes have come into their own right.

Construction Vehicles.

Something we can never do without.

Every part of the building industry today relies on some form of vehicles to help. From roads to rails, from housing to skyscrapers. The Bulldozer and the JCB are probaly the most well known types, then (steam) rollers and various digger types, as well as tippers.

There is a longer history to construction of any thing, that meets the eye. Even in ancient history wheeled waggons, towers and carts, as well as cranes and pullys were employed in building. The Egyptian and Aztec Pyramids and many Celtic monuments such as Stone Henge and New Grange were constructed using slave labour and hundreds of animals to pull and heave blocks.

The future seems to be going down the road of Robotic automation and the use of more computer technologies. 

I think the idea here is perhaps saftey, but in the long term it will mean less and less human involvement and the loss of employment sadly.