The Alameda Trench is a 16-km train route which runs 10m below ground-level through the centre of Los Angeles.

Trains descend into the trench near Greenleaf Boulevard in the south and rise back to the surface at 25th Street to the north. It runs parallel to Alameda Street, from which it takes its name.

Before the trench was completed, trains up to 2.5km long would have to slowly pass through around 200 grade-level crossings (i.e. no bridges or tunnels), which resulted in considerable traffic holdups and pollution from stopped vehicles. Since the $2.4billion construction project was completed in 2002, the trench has significantly eased congestion through central Los Angeles.

The struts across the trench – clearly visible from above, and on street view – are intended to maintain the integrity of the concrete walls during California’s frequent earthquakes¹.

The trench is part of the Alameda Corridor which takes 30-60 trains per day from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles to locations across the United States – accounting for up to 1/4 of all consumer products imports. Design and construction is underway for an expansion to the east, into San Gabriel.

Somewhat surprisingly, given the number and length of trains which pass through the trench, none are visible on Google Maps. We can, however, see some on Bing Maps’ Bird’s Eye View. And this Youtube video gives you a sense of what it’s like to travel through the trench which is only used for freight traffic (though some ceremonial passenger trains did run through the Corridor on its opening day).

8 years ago today, on 21 September 2001, a huge explosion occurred in the AZF (AZote Fertilisant – nitrogen fertiliser) factory in Toulouse, France. Three hundred tonnes of ammonium nitrates blew up, creating a 200 m wide crater up to 30 m deep.

Steel girders were found 3 km away from the explosion, which itself was heard 80 km away (50 miles).

29 people died as a direct result of the incident, and over 10,000 people were injured – many thousands by the flying glass from the two thirds of the city’s windows that were shattered. Around 40,000 people were also made homeless for several days.

The official enquiry stated that the ammonium nitrate had exploded following “improper handling”, but there were unconfirmed rumours at the time that suggested that this tragedy was actually the result of a terrorist attack.

Just to the east of the crater is a large pixelated area. The Street View imagery isn’t pixellated though, and shows gives a fairly clear view of a factory. I wonder what it is?

There’s more information and theories available at Wikipedia.

Thanks to @KeirClarke.

In Indiana, the local farmers have an apparently long tradition of decorating the roofs of their barns with interesting pictures. I haven’t been able to find much information on the historical reasons why they do this, but the steeply angled roofs mean that the images are pretty clearly visible from ground level – so presumably they make for fairly good advertising hoardings.

There are tons of these decorated roofs all over the Midwestern United States, but today we’ll be limiting ourselves to ones found in Indiana, because otherwise we’d be here forever.

Based purely on the number of roofs that depict cows, I’m going to guess that there are a lot of dairy farmers in Indiana. They’re also pretty big on pigs too.

The number of properties featuring horses is pretty impressive, but there are probably even more depictions of a more modern type of workhorse, the tractor.

You know, I think I’m starting to see some common themes here. Is anyone else getting a farmyard vibe? Oh look, another tractor. Except this time, it says “MAKIN BACON”! Cool.

People do seem to have eventually started to get slightly more adventurous however, as these two roofs demonstrate through their use of “scenery”.

Of course there are occasional properties where the owners have promoted some different species, such as ducks, chickens, and deer.

Actually that’s not all, mustn’t forget the multi-coloured llamas.

It seems that some people have recognised that there isn’t much original work happening in the Indiana roof-art scene, which may explain this excellent bit of Disney copyright infringement.

Presumably this next one was also created in the name of art – unless they really do breed Unicorns round these parts?

For more roof art than you could possibly imagine, check out Ohio Barns.com. Thanks to Adriano and Felippo.

Previously on Google Sightseeing: Happy Magic Rainbow Unicorn.

There seems to be a phenomenon occurring all around the world: Giant ships have been sneaking quietly out of the shipyard, going just out the sight of their owners, turning onto their sides and taking a little siesta.

The Mediterranean Sky has been resting off the coast of Greece since early in 2003. We’re not sure if and when she’ll be returning to work, as most of her hull has rusted through.

However, the fact that her lifeboats are still intact (not salvaged as one would suspect) could mean that she is just waiting for someone to come and rouse her from her slumber. There’s a rumor going around that this old girl had some financial problems back in 1997. – Perhaps that is the reason she’s being all lazy, lying around doing nothing?

We’ve seen this sort of reckless abandonment before, so we know this little nap taker isn’t an isolated issue. See for yourself the beginnings of an international problem! What would happen if any old ship just decided to lay up in the shallows? Catastrophe!

To further investigate this crisis of sleeping/deep sleeping ships, check out some of our previous coverage: Shipwreck, Key Largo, More Shipwrecks, Iraqi Shipwrecks, Shipwreck! and Saharan Shipwrecks.

Update: RobK points out another sleeping beauty, this time its the World Discoverer in the Solomon Islands.

Can you find any more? Post the link in the comments and we’ll see how many of these dosing giants we can find!

UPDATE: Due to the level of response to this post, we have stopped accepting notes of interest – thanks to everyone who got in touch. If you haven’t heard back from us yet then it’s likely that your application didn’t reach us in time, sorry. To everyone that has already received a response, we’re looking forward to hearing back from you!

In an effort to maintain the output of Google Sightseeing in the face of ever increasing familial and other life-related pressures, we’re today starting a new recruitment drive.

We’re looking to expand our small team of enthusiastic writers, all of whom love to explore Google Earth, Maps and Streetview, and are passionate about finding interesting places and learning new things.

Although we rely on user suggested sights for inspiration, each entry that we publish is individually researched and personally hand crafted by an author. Therefore successful applicants will have a genuine interest in the subjects we write about, and of course excellent written English skills.

We expect a few hours per week of commitment from our writers, each of whom is paid a flat fee for every published post. And at the moment, we have no upper limit set on the number of people we’ll employ – if we think you have something to contribute to the site, then we’ll make room for you.

Do you think this might be you? Then get in touch through our contact form for more information.