CONTEXT 186 : DECEMBER 2025 25 The sister crane to the Sasebo Crane at the Walker Yard in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, experiencing a new life after being uprated to serve the UK’s offshore oil and gas industry The 150-ton Giant Cantilever Crane at Nagasaki, built in 1909 and still operating in Mitsubishi Heavy Engineering’s shipyard. It was included within the successful Unesco world heritage nomination of the Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution in 2015. (All photos on this page: Miles Oglethorpe) The conservation challenge Much of what Sir William Arrol built was constructed from mild steel. Although it is a strong, versatile material, it requires maintenance to prevent decay, especially in areas where water gathers and is unable to drain or evaporate. Even with protective coatings such as the Forth Bridge’s red paint, vulnerable areas will suffer from potentially dangerous rust over time. Giant cranes are no exception, and the problem is exacerbated by their scale, exposure, elevation and maritime location. Equally, the multi-coat system recently used on the Forth Bridge renovation required the removal of all the old paint layers and was very expensive. For most Giant cranes, viable maintenance has been possible only if they have remained operational. This is why the two Japanese cranes have survived, and why the Arrol-built Walker Crane (1931) still stands proudly on the banks of the Tyne, having been uprated from 250- to 350-ton capacity. Elsewhere, the cost of maintaining the cranes has been seen as too great. The Giants in places like Rosyth, Vickers in Barrow and even BAe’s Fairfield Shipyard, have all been lost, despite some having statutory protection. Today the largest cluster of Giants survives, appropriately, on the River Clyde. All are disused, and include the Arrol cranes at John Brown (Clydebank, 1908), Barclay Curle (Whiteinch, 1917), James Watt Dock (Greenock, 1920) and the Finnieston Crane (Stobcross, 1932). All are prominent riverside features and all exhibit varying degrees of distress. All require urgent intervention, but the hugely impressive conservation job done on the Forth Bridge is beyond the means of their current owners. Glasgow’s Giants are in fact the tip of the steel-conservation iceberg. Across the world there are prominent steel structures, often major pieces of infrastructure like railway bridges, that are in urgent need of maintenance. In many cases there are insufficient resources for a comprehensive maintenance regime, so the question arises as to the potential for a more targeted conservation approach. It was this possibility that brought my organisation, TICCIH, into contact with conservation scientists in Germany (Heritage Conservation Centre, Ruhr in Bochum) and with a company called Termarust in Quebec, Canada, promoting new types of steel coatings. These, based on HRCSA (high-ratio co-polymerized calcium sulfonate), involve the targeted cleaning of areas of severe corrosion and the subsequent application of HRCSA-based coatings, which drive out the dangerous moisture and arrest corrosion. Termarust claims to have very significantly extended the life of many bridges across North America, and now research is being conducted in Europe to test out the new coatings. Glasgow’s own Giants will no doubt perish if nothing is done. The Barclay Curle crane, for example, looks especially vulnerable. It would be fantastic if the HRCSA coatings could be tested out on these cranes. If successful, the outlook for steel-built heritage across the UK and beyond would, without doubt, be uplifting. Miles Oglethorpe, the former head of industrial heritage at Historic Environment Scotland, is president of TICCIH (International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage). INFRASTRUCTURE
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