Alignment of crane rails using a survey network

Alignment surveys have been carried out by various means and for a variety of applications for decadas. Although optical offset and photogrammetric methods are successfully used in many cases. triangulation using theodolites or total stations is preferred for most alignment surveys carried out by surveyors. This paper describes a novel alignment survey which required 300m long crane rails to be measured to an accuracy of one millimetre using a combination of angular triangulation and distance measurement.