Trinity

GETTY IMAGESMERSEY GATEWAY

Building bridges requires the placement of concrete panels, sometimes constructed off site and hauled to the bridge and other times cast in place with movable scaffolding systems (MSS) that essentially act as giant molds.

Nicknamed Trinity, the creation of the Mersey Gateway bridge in Cheshire, England, used an MSS Trinity, and it was designed specifically for the project at 230 feet in length, longer than a traditional machine of its type and larger than one ever seen in Europe. Trinity created over 2,300 feet of bridge deck before a 2017 dismantling that required its 1,200 components, 3,000 pieces and over 60,000 bolts to all come apart for either reuse or recycling.

NASA Transport-Crawlers

GETTY IMAGESMATT STROSHANE

NASA’s crawler-transporter 1 and CT-2 have over 50 years of experience as some of the most unique purpose-built monster machines. Designed in the 1960s by Marion Shovel Company of Ohio and each weighing more than 6 million pounds, the crawlers were originally part of the Apollo Program to move shuttles 4.2 miles from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Launch Pad 39B. Each crawler—both listed on the National Register of Historic Places—is 131 feet long, 114 feet wide and with eight treads to move at 1 mph. With specialized equalizing and leveling systems, multiple pick points and about 2,000 miles driven (each), CT-2 was recently outfitted to handle Mars mission components, keeping these machines in use.

Bertha

WSDOT

When it came time to dig a 1.7-mile-long tunnel under downtown Seattle to replace the aging Alaskan Way Viaduct, Washington State Department of Transportation officials turned to the world’s largest tunnel-boring machine.

Designed and built in Japan specifically to handle Seattle’s soil, the 57.5-foot diameter machine, dubbed Bertha, weighed nearly 8,000 tons and trailed 326 feet in length. Despite a nasty breakdown and multi-year fix, Bertha and its 700 cutting tools on the cutterhead face completed the bore in 2017 and was disassembled on site.

Otto and Lore

ESO

When the decision came to place the world’s biggest ground-based telescope in the harsh climate of a Chilean plateau 16,500 feet above sea level, the Scheurerle corporation needed to create Otto and Lore, the specially designed transporters built simply for hauling the Atacama Large Millimeter Array up the mountain.

With each weighing transporter 130 tons and featuring 28 wheels, it takes a 700-horsepower diesel engine to move the 65-foot-long, 33-foot wide and 20-foot-tall machine at speeds of no more than 7 mph when hauling equipment.