RUBBLE MASTER conquers Swiss mountains

“Higher, higher, and higher still” – this could be the maxim of RUBBLE MASTER at the Linthal project in the Swiss canton of Glarus. This time the 28-t RM100 was moved even higher, with a material cableway, to 2500 m above sea level. Transport of the machine was particularly challenging because the cableway had been designed to carry a maximum load of “just” around 28 t (Fig. 1). The task of the RM100 in this new phase of construction was to crush 25 000 t limestone blasted out of the mountain to 0/70 cubic particles, an average of 180 t being crushed per hour by the machine (Fig. 2). After work had been completed at the end of October 2010 the RM100 was transported by cableway back to the base station. One of the challenges for the site management was that the onset of winter at such an altitude is always an uncertainty factor in the Swiss Alps. The current construction phases in the “Linthal 2015” project involve driving of the pressure shafts, as well as the machine and transformer caverns with a size of 150 x 30 x 5 m (machine cavern).