Moving can be stressful, but transporting an entire
house in one piece sounds almost impossible.

This is the kind of daunting challenge facing teams
of structural movers in the third series of Monster
Moves, which features some of the most daring
relocation projects ever undertaken. This week’s
show follows two teams of engineers as they each
attempt to move enormous historic structures to
new homes. In Iowa, a huge hall is dragged across
a city; and in Canada, an old plane has to be
moved to a museum.
In this week’s Monster Moves, two teams of
movers attempt to haul two huge historic items to
new locations. In Des Moines, Iowa, house hauler
Jeremy Patterson attempts to relocate the largest
structure to be shifted in the world this year – the
immense 700-tonne Murillo Hall. This enormous
building needs to be hauled a distance of one
kilometre – right through the middle of bustling Des Moines city.
Built in 1903, the Murillo is one of the last remaining historic structures in the city, but it stands on a prime site destined for redevelopment.
Local property developer Phil Kaiser stepped in to buy the hall and plans to move it to one of his own sites across the city. “The Murillo is just a beautiful example of what our architecture was like at the turn of the century. There’s not many buildings like this around, and we need to preserve something like this,” says Phil.
Kaiser calls in Jeremy Patterson to haul the hall across the city at a cost of £200,000. But Jeremy faces an immense challenge. The walls of the building are made from four layers of solid – but brittle – masonry; the streets are narrow and bustling with traffic; and winter is fast approaching.
“It went from a tough project to a headache of a project real fast,” says Jeremy. The team must protect the immensely heavy structure from crippling the roads; while also devising a way to stop the walls from cracking as they are dragged over all manner of bumps and dips. Will the unwieldy four-storey structure survive the treacherous trek across town intact?
This week’s programme also follows the delicate operation to dismantle and move a vintage Canadian aircraft – a Lockheed Lodestar. First built in 1941, these planes saw service in the golden age of aviation. During World War II, they became reliable workhorses for transporting critical supplies to troops; and during peacetime, they
were fitted out to transport VIPs and dignitaries all over the world. This particular Lodestar has carried some of Canada’s most important passengers, including Prime Minister St Laurent, making it an iconic piece of Canadian aviation history.
The aircraft sits at the entrance to Langley Airport in British Columbia, but is in desperate need of restoration. To safeguard this legend of the skies, a team of aviation enthusiasts – led by former Lodestar Captain Bill Marr – organises a rescue mission to move and restore the plane for display 60 kilometres away at the Canadian Museum of Flight.
Moving the plane to its new home proves a big challenge. The aircraft no longer flies, but is too large to haul on the back of a truck in a single piece. Bill must therefore form a team to dismantle the wing and tail sections of the aircraft before hoisting the fragile fuselage of the Lodestar onto a specially rigged truck for transport. It is a precarious and time-consuming operation. “It’s worse than picking up an egg,” says lead mover Ron Bakker. “It’s like picking up a rotten egg!”
Ron and his crew negotiate tight turns, low bridges, city traffic and the daunting Trans- Canada highway in the middle of the night to reach the Lodestar’s final destination. Once there, the craft must then be painstakingly reassembled and restored.