Continuing this week’s theme of mining, today we’re visiting Germany’s lignite mining area to find some of the largest land vehicles on Earth!

Lignite (or “brown coal”) is found in 3 nearby open cast mines in the Rhineland; Hambach, Bergheim and Garzweiler. Collectively they extract over 100 million tons of lignite every year. Extracting such massive amounts of coal requires massive machines — hence the development of these descriptively named “Bucket-Wheel Excavators“.

Their operation is simple; a large rotating wheel has numerous buckets around the rim – which scoop up the lignite (or soil), and then drop it onto a conveyer belt which runs along to the centre of the machine. A typical Bucket-Wheel Excavator could extract the area of a football field, 30m deep, in a single day’s work.

Although the current World record for “largest land vehicle” is held by the RB293 bucket wheel excavator, the former title holder’s story is much more interesting.

The story goes that Bagger 288 was the reigning champ in the large vehicle stakes, and operated at the most southerly Mine, Hambach. Here Bagger 288 worked away, happily removing the soil which covered the lignite, until 2001 when it had exposed all the coal and was to be re-located to the Garzweiler mine to the North.

However, rather than dismantling the $100 million machine and moving it in pieces, it was deemed cheaper to just drive the 200m long, 100m tall vehicle, 22 kilometres up the road to its new home!

Unfortunately that route happened to cross Autobahn 61, the River Erft, a railroad line and several roads… The whole process cost the equivalent of $10 million and took three weeks! This absolutely incredible photo taken during the operation gives you pretty good idea of Bagger 288’s scale.

More pictures here and here. Wikipedia links for Bucket-Wheel Excavator & Bagger 288.

Thanks to Stefan, Graeme Wilkinson, Paul Burkitt-Gray, Chris, Darby & many other people!

This madman is walking down the middle of a motorway! Hmmm, on second thought… maybe he’s not in any danger. I wonder what he’s up to though?

Thanks: ledzepmet

Although in these images it remains unfinished, the most recent image updates have at least allowed us to see what is today, the tallest road bridge in the world – The Millau Viaduct.

Constructed by the Eiffage company (better known for the slightly shorter Eiffel Tower), the Millau Viaduct tops out at a whopping 343 metres, and the traffic travels a terrifying 270 metres above the bottom of the valley.¹

In these images you can clearly see the temporary towers erected to enable the positioning of the bridge deck (they show as orange in these images, but they were really red), which dates these images to around early 2004.

Hopefully Google will update this area of France soon, and we can see the viaduct in all her glory!

Thanks to Jan Fabry, Freddie, Alexander Apostolovski, Marc, Patryk and Nick Miners.

Does anyone know why these kids in a French playground have formed a giant star shape? Perhaps it’s some sort of playground game, but not one I ever played!

Which makes me wonder — has anyone found any other kids playing playground games?

Thanks to Andrew Crawford.

There are about 80 known whale species around the globe, the largest of which is of course the Blue Whale, which can measure up to a massive 30m long.

Such a giant beast should easily be visible on the aerial and satellite photographs of Google Earth, it’s just a matter of finding them…

To start with, there’s definitely a blue whale in this Japanese swimming pool, but I don’t think that counts.

The Route 66 landmark Blue Whale slide is so famous it even appeared in Sega’s King of Route 66 video game. More info.

Outside of UC Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Laboratory there’s an 85-foot long Blue Whale skeleton. The female whale was washed ashore of Pescadero Beach in 1979, after dying of unknown causes.

We’ve still not found any live whales though! Off the coast of Santa Barbara there’s a 10m long grey blob that could resemble a whale, or more likely a shark. Either way it would have to be very close to the surface to be seen so easily. I’m not convinced.

‘Reverence‘ is a sculpture by Jim Sardonis, which depicts two whales seemingly diving into the grass. The tails are each 12-13 foot tall and made of granite. More info.

Back in Japan, and Ueno Park has more than tails – there’s a life size Blue Whale diving into the ground. More info.

And finally, to Argentina, where there could just be real whales.

According to whale expert wildslide these are southern right whales who breed in this area during the months of May and October. Success!

Previously on Google Sightseeing: Whales! and Beached Whale

Thanks: The many people who thought they saw a whale, including: Jonathan_Tronson, FrequentFlyer, danescombe, bagabnoosh, kjfitz, Ralph Mettier, Nick, Jim Morton, Andrew, Rking, Yoshino, Barb, Caraurta, danescombe, Todd Pearson, Andrea from Italy, Nichole, James, A30 & John Hartnup