“With hindsight, we can say that we did everything right,” said Druske, but he made no secret that there was a lot of luck involved. The conditions under which the crane had to be erected were difficult: Only a little more than ten hours were allowed to be spent on the construction, come wind and rain. “The narrow time window was due to the extensive closure of the area, which was ended in the evening,” said Druske, who assembles cranes of all sizes for the Wolff company from Heilbronn. This was because no trams could travel in front of the main station during the erection; the overhead lines had to be disconnected by the Bonn public utility company. In addition, flat-bed trucks and a truck-mounted crane required a lot of space and blocked the roadway.

Although the wind speed was between about 11 to 25 km per hour in the morning, it increased steadily during the course of the day. In the end, the gusts were so strong that it was almost impossible to erect the crane. “The truck-mounted crane can only be used in wind speeds up to about 43 km per hour." It not only lifted the individual elements for the red crane tower to the top, but also the approximately 65 metre-long jib, which had previously been mounted on the ground.

But Druske had to concentrate not only on the work, but also on onlookers, who constantly stopped and asked for details, “most often, of course, about the height and weight of the crane,” he said. An elderly couple who stopped during a stroll through the city remembered the accident three years ago well: At that time, a crane was in place opposite the main station due to other construction work and crashed onto the roof of the station building. “When it’s windy like this, you wonder whether it could happen again,” said the woman, but a human error was to blame for the accident in 2017. During the demolition of the old southern superstructure, a piece of concrete fell onto a 15-metre high dust protection flap attached to the construction crane and caused it to fall.

The crane now erected at the main station is needed for the next restoration steps of the 5,500 square-metre hall roof, which is a listed building. Deutsche Bahn had actually planned to have it finished by the end of 2019. The costs were estimated at 13 million euros before the start of construction. However, problems that arose during the construction phase put a spoke in the planners' wheel: Deutsche Bahn announced in 2018 that completion was not expected until the end of 2020 and that the cost would be 35.4 million euros.

Glazing that will allow more light into the station is already visible in the new section. The steel is no longer painted blue, but grey, because that corresponds to the original colour of the building, which was built in 1883/1884. The intermediate roof next to the vaulted roof, which is a listed building, is to be made almost exclusively of glass and not of plastic as was previously the case.

(Original text; Nicolas Ottersbach, translation John Chandler)