Brick Train
Friday, 12th September 2008 by Alex Turnbull
Is it a giant turd? Is it Superman? No, it's a train! Made entirely from bricks!
See, seriously. A train made from bricks, and all in the name of art apparently.
The brainchild of sculptor David Mach, the brick train cost around £760,000, contains 185,000 bricks and took 34 brickies a total of 21 weeks to build. Modeled on the 1938 record-setting "Mallard" steam train, the art work is presumably supposed to pay some sort of homage to Darlington's rich railway heritage, but nevertheless caused controversy when it was unveiled in 1997.
Would any of you keen sightseers like to comment about what you think the artist was on, er... I mean, what the artist's intentions were, when he decided to make this?
Here's some more info, and a ground-level photo.
Thanks to Alex McGlashan.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
I dont know what all the fuss is about. I think its great and very impressive in real life. Its certainly the best sculpture of a train made out of bricks in a supermarket car park that i’ve ever seen. Choo – choo
I think it’s excellent. I think the controversy was to do with the cost more than anything but that always happens with art. It looks much more impressive in real life, it’s reallt quite big!
To be fair, I actually quite like David Mach’s work. Every day, thousands see his Big Heids (Live maps link) by the side of the M8 motorway here in Scotland, and for reasons I can’t explain, I particularly enjoyed his Coat Hanger Gorilla which had some press recently.
Ground-level photo is 404 🙁 But ‘more info’ seems to have it covered 🙂
From the top it doesn’t look like much, but I think it looks pretty cool in the ground-level shots.
The ‘ground level’ link works if you remove the ‘t’ on the end of the address. Quite impressive I must say.
@Phaedrus & CaveMark: Thanks,the post has been updated and the link will now work!
hahaha brings new meaning to the term Cleveland steamer