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Italy sub crosses Milan on wheels

Published on August 16, 2005 3:57 PM | Comments

Here is an interesting story from the BBC:

"A 340-tonne Italian submarine has completed its last, expensive journey, reaching its destination - a Milan museum - on board a huge trailer. The transport operation, said to have cost 1m euros (£684,000), entailed four years of planning.

Streetlamps and traffic lights were temporarily removed and roundabouts flattened to allow it to pass.

The Enrico Toti was built in 1967 to track Soviet submarines in the Mediterranean during the Cold War.

Three-dimensional computer simulations were used to assess potential damage to buildings and bridges along the way.

"We had to flatten roundabouts, take down street lamps, cover tramlines, not to mention reinforcing the ground covering Milan's underground canal network," said Giovanni di Paolo, the engineer in charge of the submarine's transport.

When it arrived in Milan on Saturday night, tens of thousands of people were lining the streets to welcome it - knowing it will take a few months before it opens to the public at the Leonardo da Vinci Museum for Science and Technology."




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