A super-heavy transporter combination has completed an epic journey, carting a 410 tonne power station generator stator 500 kilometres across India – the trip taking three months to complete.

The Faktor 5 model transporter from German company Goldhofer is known as a high girder bridge….as it's built very much in the fashion of a steel bridge girder to handle the enormous loads it can carry. At either end the Faktor 5 rests on an 18-axle trailer set, with tractor units both pushing and pulling. Total weight of the rig was over 760t.

The job was carried out by Mumbai-based logistics and heavy-haul company Lee & Muirhead, whose staff christened the Faktor 5 "Hanuman" after a monkey-like Hindu deity revered for his enormous strength – which, according to legend, enabled him to carry a mountain from the Himalayas.

With barely half of India's road network being hard-surfaced and with more than 150 multi-span long bridges and numerous other obstacles to be negotiated, the route offered challenge after challenge. It even included a 15km stretch that had so many tight bends it was impassable for the complete rig, so the stator had to be moved onto an 18-axle split combination and the Faktor 5 completely dismantled, then reassembled on the far side.

In order to negotiate some obstacles, the unit had to be raised up to 1.5 metres – still within its vertical limit of 1.8m. On the other hand, several road and railway underpasses called for it to be lowered – on one occasion leaving just 4 centimetres' clearance under a rail bridge. For that operation, rail traffic had to be halted, as the passage of a train would have deflected the bridge enough to potentially damage the stator.

Another time, the combination had to skirt a toll plaza, calling for the construction of a dedicated bypass. On other sections of the route, the gradients were so steep that a third tractor unit was needed in addition to the standard push-pull configuration.

Lee & Muirhead expects this will be far from the Faktor 5's only big job, since more than 30 new power stations are scheduled for construction in India over the next few years.