Cardington Airship Hangar in Bedfordshire, England, could house an aircraft carrier. The floor area of the hangar is twice the size of a football pitch. Both of the 470-tonne, 55-by-24-metre doors of this 1928 engineering classic now rest on spherical roller bearings from SKF.
The hangar has seen a lot of action. It was originally built to house R100 airships, at the time the latest fad in air passenger transport.
By 1996 the doors were getting increasingly difficult to slide open. An analysis showed that the original roller bearings had worn out.
SKF was awarded the job to replace the old bearings. The assignment was carried out with engineers from the Building Research Establishment (BRE), which currently uses the hangar for research purposes.
Eight 100-tonne hydraulic jacks were required to raise the hangar doors, so that the wheel bogies could be removed. It took a week to remove each bogie. After the bogies were removed, they were dismantled and parts were re-machined or re-produced. Finally, each wheel was fitted with two SKF 24026 CC/W33 spherical roller bearings and the new wheel assemblies were re-fitted to the door.