Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

Crane Crash

Posted by Rob, Wednesday, 5th March 2008

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On 17th January, 2007, a freight train from Brisbane to Melbourne derailed in Sydney, Australia. Four days later, the crane that was being used to recover the train also toppled over! The crane fell onto one of the workers who, despite having to be hospitalised, thankfully only received minor injuries.

The 34m crane can be seen lying behind some houses which seem to have had quite a lucky escape! The train was put back onto the tracks and moved away, and eventually the crane was also removed for repair, presumably by another crane…

traintopple.jpg

Exhaustive ground level pictures of the train and crane are available at railstore.net – and they’re definitely for real, as opposed to the infamous ‘toppling crane’ sequence that frequently circles the web!

Thanks to POD.

7 Responses to 'Crane Crash'

  1. nova72 says:

    thats cool!

    check out the swimmers here…
    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

  2. Peter says:

    Heh, I see from the linked pictures that rail-car graffiti is popular in Australia as well as in America.

  3. dr.R. says:

    Any idea what this is? Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
    It seems a bit too big to be a garden shed… ;)

  4. dr R.
    Try clicking on HYBRID and it might give you a bit of a clue!

  5. Rob says:

    That is a heck of a lot of concrete!

    Nice find dr.R!

  6. Jel says:

    Dunno about the swimmers, but it’s a good job the enlargement dosn’t permit us to see too clearly what this couple are actually up to…

  7. dr. R. The large concrete building is one of the water resevoirs for Sydney.

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