Some of the wind farms in the Montagne Noire are having their wind turbines replaced. The turbine blades are transported by a ‘blade lifter’ which I saw this morning. Amazing things. There’s a depot north of Carcassonne where they are being stored along with nacelles and huge sections of the towers.
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It really does look as though it should topple over. I’m going to try to get some piccies next week when they start transporting more blades.
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I think I followed one a year ago, couldn’t believe how long it took to overtake it.
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I hope they’re avoiding low bridges. 
You don’t realise the scale of them until you get close; I remember seeing them from the A61 as they put them up near Lézignan.
…and overhead power lines!
How is that even possible?!
They’re clever bits of kit - in fact far clever than most people realise:
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Need to show that to French shops when they say they can’t deliver 
Fortunately, I came along it, at the back of a long tailback of traffic not far from where I needed to turn off. Looking ahead, there was a large layby about 100m past the turnoff full of lorries that came from the other direction. I think they were sending smaller vehicles on a diversion and stacking lorries in laybys or other convenient places. It was far too big for any traffic to be able to come in the other direction.
The weight of the blades is relatively low and given sufficient power in the lifter the blade can lifted. The problems come with cross winds that could tip the blade and truck over.
The main reason for them is for getting round awkward corners, but do they use them for the mounting procedure too?
When I was involved in long loads, many years ago, steerable trailer wheels were the limit of our equipment, but didn’t stop me decapitating a plastic bollard at traffic lights in the centre of Bangor N. Wales, with the opposite swing of the tail overhang.
I stopped to report it to the council depot on the outskirts of town where I was due to rdv with my police escort. Police hated the job and were always pressing us to go faster and, on that occasion, the last leg to Pwllheli was done at over 60 mph. 
Half way there we came upon a much slower, smaller, lorry and I heaved a sigh of relief thinking it would slow us down. Not a bit of it, the copper set up his blues and twos and pulled him off the road. 
One that would amuse you was shipping to Africa.
A British Embassy used to receive 2x20’ containers per 6-months from the UK, but some bright spark decided to save money by shipping a 40’ box.
The reason for 20’ was so they could get around corners; the 40’ inevitably got stuck and they had unstuff the container away from the embassy.
A lot of assistance was provided by the local population, especially moving the alcohol.
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Must have been some narrow winding roads then, 40’ used to be the max trailer length allowed for an artic, nowadays it is even longer.
The instance I mentioned above was a 70’ steel beam on a 60’ trailer, thus a 10 foot overhang. I knew it would take out the bollard but did my best to avoid it by moving over to the right hand side of the road to make the left turn as straight as possible, but the last few feet meant the tip of the beam did the damage anyway.
We have 5 wind turbines located in the next village and way back in 2008 they started arriving ready for installation. They came past our house and we managed to get some photos.
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That’s amazing, Rachel. Great photos.
Roads in Africa can be “slightly different”!
Have you seen the road trains in Australia, now they are long.
Yes, certainly and have driven them. The longest on public roads were a max of 3 x 40 foot trailers, that was back in the '60s. The super long ones are on the extensive private tracks of mining companies although I believe that, with a slightly different setup, (B trains) 4 trailers are now permitted on road, not all of which are as long.
But there is no comparison with abnormal loads that we have been discussing because road trains have several bends in them. The one I drove had 5 articulation points along its length and, as only the first one was on a 5th wheel connection (which produces a greater cut in) the rest had their own steerable 1st axles so took the train in a wider arc.
What are they like to reverse?
Great photo.
But the photos dont show the bloody great blimp holding the end up 