Freeing One Drilling Rig Cost Part of a Railway Bridge and an Estimated 30 Million Crowns

A lorry carrying a drilling rig on a low-loader became wedged under the railway bridge on Vídeňská street in Krč on the evening of Wednesday 7 October. It came out shortly before midnight on Thursday, after a recovery operation that ran for more than twenty-four hours and ended with part of the bridge being demolished to let the drill head through. The fire brigade's estimate of the damage to that part of the structure is 30 million crowns.

Zdopravy.cz reported the operation over two days and is the source for what follows.

Three railways, two owners, one span hit

The bridge takes three railway lines over the four-lane Vídeňská. Two of them belong to Správa železnic; the third is the transport undertaking's, and runs from Krč station to the Kačerov metro depot. The lorry wedged under the DPP span.

It is a siding only for operational purposes; occasionally there are heritage trips on it.

— Aneta Řehková, spokeswoman for DPP, answering a question from ČTK

Martin Kavka, Správa železnic's spokesman for incidents, said the SŽ bridge was not affected and traffic on it was running. So the damage sits entirely on the span over which, by its owner's own account, almost nothing runs: the service connection to the depot that serves metro line C, and the occasional excursion.

That is the figure worth holding on to. Thirty million crowns is what a low-loader cost the city on a railway nobody rides, and the number is a reminder that a service siding is still a structure with foundations, a deck and an owner with a maintenance budget. What a depot connection is for only becomes visible when it is broken.

The recovery, and the 30 million

The sequence tells you how firmly it was stuck. Two special vehicles were deployed overnight without success. In the morning the fire brigade asked Správa železnic for help, and SŽ brought in its recovery tank — described in the reporting as the most powerful special vehicle in the country. That failed too, and then broke down during the day. A reserve tank was called from Zbiroh and arrived around 16:00, with another from Přerov on its way. An 84-tonne crane from the firm Švestka was brought in to serve as the tank's anchor point.

With the drill head caught behind the edge of the bridge, the crews went at the bridge instead.

What is going on is essentially the demolition of part of that bridge. We are trying to free up as much as possible of the space the drilling rig is stuck in, but it is nothing major.

— Miroslav Řezáč, spokesman for the Prague fire brigade

Read against the 30-million estimate the brigade itself gave on the same day, "nothing major" is doing a lot of work. We report both because both are the brigade's: the demolition needed to free the rig was small in the context of the structure, and the bill for it is not small.

Both tanks together, with an external hydraulic drive connected, freed the trailer from the bridge structure around 23:00 on Thursday. The rig was taken apart overnight, loaded onto a new low-loader at about 06:15 on Friday and removed after 07:00.

What it did to the street

Vídeňská stayed closed outbound from the centre throughout. Even after the recovery, traffic remained restricted: the Technical Administration of Roads said the surface was damaged and fouled by the operation.

Buses from the Kačerov direction were diverted, and the U Labutě stop towards Nemocnice Krč was moved to the junction of U Krčského nádraží and Vídeňská. Ten lines were affected — 106, 113, 114, 138, 139, 150, 157, 189, 196 and 215.

Because of heavy private car traffic on the diversion route, services are running 10 to 25 minutes late, and the delay is carried over to services towards the centre as well.

— ROPID

The brigade also asked the public to stop calling the emergency lines, the regional operations centre and the crews with suggestions: "even well-meant advice. We have experts on site who are dealing with the situation and assessing it carefully."