Document text
Texas-sized transformer hits the road By BILL VARBLE How do you move a 342,000-pound load? Very carefully. With plenty of braking power. And lots of axles. A Texas-based company is getting ready to haul such a load over Highway 140 between Klamath Falls and Eagle Point in the form of a giant electrical power transformer, probably Monday. "We're trying to get ready to go," said Don Jones, of Houston Sea Packing, the shipper. Jones is in charge of moving the load over a 5,000-foot summit in the Cascade mountains, down some steep grades and over a critical bridge near Eagle Point. Oregon Department of Transportation officials said the rig, lumbering along at up to 15 mph with a pilot car, will slow traffic on Highway 140, but the highway won't be closed. The equipment is to be installed at PacifiCorp's Meridian substation. It was manufactured in Turkey by Alstrom U.S.A., which has a plant in White City. "We build transformers here," Alstrom's Rick Sawyer said, "but nothing this big." The load will travel to the Rogue Valley on a special tractor-trailer rig that's more than 100 feet long and 12 feet wide and has 19 axles. It's powered by a 450 hp diesel with extra-low gears. There will be a safety truck hooked to the front on the way up and to the rear on the way down. Jones said he doesn't expect any trouble. "I've been up there a half-dozen times," he said. "I'll probably go up again before we go." Shipment was held up for several days until Houston Sea Packing could assure ODOT officials the truck would be in exactly the configuration it specified and that ODOT used in computer simulations of bridge crossings. "We analyzed the bridges with different numbers of axles and different spacings," said Rick Listella of ODOT. "If the spacings can't be maintained as reported, it puts a different weight on different parts of the bridge." The equipment went by ship from Turkey to Houston and by rail to Klamath Falls. At 173 inches, it's too high to fit through railroad tunnels between there and the Rogue Valley and has been sitting at a Union Pacific siding for two weeks as a team of installation specialists from Turkey awaits delivery. The load required ODOT to figure out if it could safely cross the bridge on Highway 140 near Eagle Point where the road crosses Little Butte Creek near milepost 18. The state will issue the permit, which is good for five days, on Monday, a permit official said late Friday. The final destination is a substation on the 500-kilovolt intertie, the huge power line that passes behind Roxy Ann Peak east of Medford on its way from the Bonneville Power Administration and the Columbia River to Los Angeles. The transformers receive 500,000 volts and step the power down to a lower voltage for transmission to Southern California. Jones said he has moved such loads all over the world. He said the hardest thing about the Oregon job has been ODOT. "But I understand you have some problems with your bridges," he added. Many Oregon bridges are half a century old. A recent report said that nearly 500 need to be brought up to modern standards. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.