Aaiieeeee! Run for the hills! There’s a Monster Dog on the loose!

Apparently our submitter found this mega-pooch while she was looking at real estate listings in the area – but says that she’s no longer sure if she wants to live in an area that’s terrorized by giant dogs.

However, here at GSS, we reckon a guard dog of that size would be a pretty effective burglar deterrent…

Thanks to Christina Ross.

Between the cities of Lathen and Dörpen, Germany, lies the Emsland Transrapid Test Facility – a 31.5 km long elevated track built to test trains propelled by magnetic levitation – a form of transportation that suspends, guides and propels vehicles using electromagnets to keep them floating just above the tracks.

The trains developed here have only been put into commercial operation once, between Pudong International Airport and Shanghai, but they’ve achieved speeds in excess of 500 km/h during testing, and in normal operation have a maximum speed of 431 km/h (268 mph).

The test track consists of two huge loops, one at Dörpen which is connected to the other at Lathen, and on the day these images were taken, a Transrapid is visible on the northern loop. Looks like it might be going pretty fast too.

Sadly the first ever fatal accident involving a Maglev train occurred at Lathen in September 2006, when a Transrapid train collided with a maintenance vehicle, killing 23 people.

Read more at Wikipedia about Magnetic levitation, Magnetically levitating trains, the Transrapid system, the Emsland test facility, the 2006 Lathen maglev train accident and the Shanghai Maglev Train.

Thanks to Winchester, Jan Brasna

As 2007 draws to a close we present our choices for the best posts of the year.

Best Mystery

There were numerous contenders for the most confusing or bizarre images, but our pick is the Mystery Plane Outline, as even the generally accepted answer, that these are small rocks arranged in the shape of a plane, still begs the question: “But why bother?”.

Best personal project

In February we were impressed with one man’s attempt to single-handedly recreate a cruise ship in his front drive.

Lamest World Record

The Largest Wooden ship in the world from April easily wins this prize, due to having a less-than-exciting title and the fact that the specially built ship has never even been in the water!

A special mention also goes to the German towns squabbling over who has the most unintentionally leaning building.

Our Brains Hurt Award

Getting our heads around the Island and Lake recursion from September’s Island Week 2 was almost too much, but I think we get it now…

Best Smallest Thing

We loved the idea of the world’s smallest parks from January, but the world’s smallest municipal park was just too darn small to see from satellite! Fortunately, Google now have a street view shot of it.

Best World’s Most Enlarged Thing

In the last year we’ve featured many, many sights that claim to be the “World’s largest something” but our pick for the Best Largest something is the World’s largest fingerprint.

Best Imagery

Undoubtedly the most amazing images to be found in Google Earth are the African Megaflyover project aerial shots, and the best of these images were highlighted in November’s Google Sightseeing Safari.

Best Blurry Pictures

Some of the aerial images in Google Earth are amazingly high resolution, but not high enough for our tour of miniature parks across the globe, which ended up as a list of blurry blobs that sort-of look like the Eiffel tower.

Best Landart

The ancient Incan geoglyph of a cat is fantastic, and much more intersting and attractive than kfc’s logo stunt.

Most Ignored Warning

A few days after we posted this year’s April fools joke: “Live Satellite Images in Google Earth” we updated the entry with a banner warning users that it was a prank and there are no live images to be seen. Did anyone read that? Of course not! We still get a new message almost every week from someone who fell for the joke and wants to know where the live images are.

Most In-Depth Post

For a long time it had no decent imagery, so during Island Week this year we really went to town on our Easter Island post, and managed to condense 2,000 years of history into a mere 600 words.

Best Large Type

The rooftop message “Welcome to Cleveland” isn’t very interesting at first glance, until you realise that the message is over 400 miles away in Milwaukee!

So that’s our picks of the year, but with over 250 entries in 2007, what were your favourites?

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2008 – see you all next year!

Today marks the launch of London’s new Channel Tunnel¹ rail link, High Speed 1 – which from now on terminates here at the “Cathedral of the railways”, St Pancras railway station.

The station actually comprises two of the most celebrated structures of the Victorian era. In our first thumnbail we can see the clock tower of St Pancras Chambers (formerly the Midland Grand Hotel), which remains one of the most impressive examples of Victorian gothic architecture anywhere in Britain.

The Midland Grand Hotel closed in 1935, and the building was used as offices until the 60s, when only a public campaign saved it from being knocked down. The building became vacant in the 1980s², and since 2005 it’s been under renovation, and will soon once again be a hotel.

The Barlow Trainshed, designed by William Henry Barlow and completed in 1868, was the largest single-span structure built up to that time. The single span roof is 74 metres across, and was actually employed purely to make maximum use of the space without obstructions.

The trainshed has received a full renovation in preparation for its new role as the London terminus of High Speed 1, and we can see the work in progress in Google’s images.

Here’s more about St Pancras at Wikipedia. Thanks to Radio 2.

Despite being widely touted as the longest trains in the world, the up-to 2.5 kilometre-long freight trains which bring iron ore to Nouadhibou, Mauritania may not be particularly unique in their length.

On the day these images were captured, the longest train we can see at Nouadhibou (as measured with Google Earth’s measuring tool) is approximately 1.97km long.

In the past we’ve seen some other extremely long trains, like these 2.2 kilometre-plus coal trains in Wyoming, and over in Pennsylvania there’s a freight train which measures 2.98km from one end to the other – a whole kilometre longer than those in Mauritania.

However, all these trains could have been put to shame by the locomotives of Port Hedland, Western Australia – if only there had been any really long ones around when these images were taken.

Sadly, the longest I could find here was a distinctly average 2.2km, which falls far short of their longest ever, which purportedly consisted of 8 engines, 682 cars and totalled a staggering 7.3km – which quite probably would have made it the longest train of all time.

So, has anyone got a longer one to show us?

For more like this, see our posts on Incredibly Long Trains and Bailey Yard. Thanks to Helge Fahrnberger, Romke Soldaat and the Keyhole users.