One slight correction: they don't just have the 5 big diggers, they also have some of the smaller machines used in the mine, like huge dozers, rail shifting machines, and even a mobile crane built out of a repurposed T34. Definitely worth seeing
You know what is the best part of your content, Tim? It isn’t the interesting diversity of amazing places you keep visiting. It isn’t your soothing voice and kind demeanor. It is the piano-covers of niche and old cartoons you keep hiding within the soundtrack of your videos. Did you think you could put the theme of Noah’s Island into the video without me noticing?
I wouldn't go as far as calling that the main draw of the channel, but yeah... I also quite enjoy the mini game of "find the funny comment this musical reference plays on the video footage" whenever I'm watching. I mean, some things are blindly obvious (Thomas the Tank Engine when a steam train drives by), but others are so subtle, I often only hear it on the second or third go. Good fun :)
@@QemeH As a non-Englishman, I pray for Tim to reveal, one day, ths list of the musical covers he uses for each of his videos : I want so much to get all these cultural references. Why doesn't he write that in the video description, for example ?
2:09 I don't know whether this was intended as a subtle reference (and if so, bravo), but the phrase "Making a mountain of of a molehill" in German would be written as "Making an elephant out of a mosquito".
I always do, that's why it takes three times as long to watch Tim's videos than their actual length. Watch video, take a pause to marvel at the editing skill, watch it again for puns, jokes and references (with subtitles on).
Never clicked a video so fast! Finally a place not far from my hometown :D Feropolis is indeed a impressiv site. I need to go there again... Tim you need to visit the F-60 now! Not far, about 60km to the east from Feropolis in southern Brandenburg, you can visit a structure called F60. Basicly a selfdriving 500m long and 79m high conveyer bridge, once used In mining! (It is called the "lying down eifeltower" for a reason) You can explore the whole structure by a guided tour :)
another local here, from Hoyerswerda, wanted to mention exactly this. btw: you can visit most active mines via free tours from the owners, might just call their PR department. oh, and if you wanna see Communist "Model cities", visit Hoyerswerda Neustadt or Eisenhüttenstadt
In Hambach, they have a whole fleet of those. But fair's fair. If you drop the Eiffeltower in that hole, only the top would stick out. The hole is 285 meters deep. Or about 900 feet. Seeing these huge Schaufelradbaggern up close is sort of breathtaking. Even the chain sections of the tracks are twice an average persons height. And when you see them from the top of the hole, they look like ants.
Interestingly, there was also a railroad museum nearby Ferropolis, where they showed rail vehicles that where used to transport all the coal out of the mine. Sadly, it had long be closed since 2007.
Right in the center of the USA, in a tiny town called West Mineral, Kansas stands Big Brutus. It's a long retired dragline shovel the size of an office building. They have a few other large excavators as well with the bonus that you can go inside and explore. Yep, even in Big Brutus himself - you climb up inside and you can give yourself a tour, sit in the operators seat - and back in the day you used to be able to climb out the boom (now closed for an obvious reason). There isn't a good way to get to it if you're not already in the area, but if you are take the drive. Every person that's grown up within 100 miles of Big Brutus has been there for at least one school trip.
Ahhh yes... Ferropolis and Drift Master European Championship. A match made in heaven. The venue is absolutely crazy when those pro spec cars bang and pop around it.
I performed at the Full Force festival on those grounds in 2019. I spent more time looking at the machines and reading about them than I did watching the other bands at the festival. These machines are marvels of engineering.
Of all the niche musical references, playing the Bagger 288 song from Rathergood has to be one of the nichest. Haven't thought about that tune in years. Bravo.
If you are interested, in Czechia, there is a museum on a bucket-wheel excavator measuring 52 meters tall, weighing around 4000 tonnes. So still not Bagger 293 territory , but almost twice the size of the one from the video.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 That's true, but even under that system, I doubt more than one or two bagger operators suffered similar levels of cosmic dread. :)
It's bizarre how they're these massive vehicles, all this machinery involved in working and moving, and then on top of all that, there's just like a normal office building for the crew. Because it's not like it has to be aerodynamic, and all the mechanical stuff is kept separate from where the crew has to hang out, so it can just be a normal building kinda thing.
The Mosquito has its name from the excavation rail looking like the proboscis of an insect - then again, it also looks like an elephant trunk so I can subscribe to your naming there. As for VEB: That stands for Volkseigener Betrieb, meaning a people owned company/corporation, which is a partial joke in itself, as private possession was "somewhat" regulated in the DDR. And obviously, knowing how the DDR worked, "Volkseigen" meant "owned by the only truly permitted party". I visited the place in 2017, and back then, there were no elevators, so props for the upgrade, Ferropolis. On a slight note, the Mad Max/Sad Dragon would drop whatever load it got fed on two adjacent trains below the main construction, being operated directly from above by hand, imagine that noise. Having added that pedantly, as always a great documentation, and a must visit when in the vicinity.
Living in Berlin, I have been to a music festival this summer there. It was REALLY impressive, and REALLY well decorated. They do a couple of different festivals each summer there. We did not camp there though, we slept in the fancy resort hotel in Gröbern (10 minute taxi ride). Can recommend!
@@rhubarbjin Bigger ones are mentioned in the video. There are three mines a bit further to the west between Cologne and Aachen. I you heard about the protests about the Hambach forest and where Greta went, yes, exactly there.
Germany is so great at re-purposing aging industry. Old mine with some massive excavators: concert hall and drift track, and let the curious people get right up to them. In America the whole area would get fenced and you would be arrested for getting close because it’s “dangerous”
You could translate it literally to "Museum für Monster-Bergbaumaschinen" or use the compound word "Monsterbergbaumaschinenmuseum" which would simply be "Monster Mining Machines Museum".
@richardharrold9736 If you go the sane German route it would be MBMM or MBbMM. If you go the bureaucratic German route it would be MonBergbMaschMu. Still better than Russian acronyms though.
@richardharrold9736 I'd guess "MBbmM" (as it would probably be more common to use hyphens to describe such a "Monster-Bergbaumaschinen-Museum"). But I also like "MfMBbm". You could also slap on an FG for "Ferropolis Gräfenhainichen". Fun fact: Ferropolis is part of the ERIH ("European Route of Industrial Heritage"). Your guess how that would fit into the acronym 😆 @mifiwi3438 I really like your "MonBergbMaschMu", that really sums up the weird acronyms quite nicely 😂
There used to be a massive (in UK scale) open pit coal mine a few miles from where I grew up, and as the mine was at the top of the valley, the digger was massive and terrifying sight on the horizon. Local legend has it, that in order to dispose of the machine when the mine was exhausted, they simply drove it into the hole and buried it. The mine has mostly been erased from the landscape now (apart from the OS map showing that it is several square miles of completely level ground in an otherwise undulating landscape) and now has a massive wind farm on top. So, we’ll never know.
Great as always. That cable you were looking at with the Earth, Wind and Fire is called a Powerlight cable and is used to connect to the Electric Universe.
I grew up in the (rather obscure, even to natives) Bone Valley of Florida, where a lot of open pit phosphate strip mining takes place. Always loved seeing the huge drag lines do their work. The Germans make our massive machines look puny in comparison.
As Tim said, the ones you saw there are still on the "smaller" end of things though. What is particularly astonishing is that these behemoths were (and are) capable of moving to different locations as well - albeit incredibly slowly at less-than-walking-pace. Imagine that for a moment. A vehicle that weighs as much as some warships that can move over land. Granted, it is dragging the mother of all extension cords behind it as it does, but the point is that it CAN move at all.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 Also weight is just one metric. The overburden conveyor bridge F60 (of which five were built in East Germany) is the largest (but obviously not heaviest) movable machine ever built, with a length of 502m and a height of 79m surpassing even the largest ships in both length and height. And unlike Bagger 288 and 293 which are still in active service one of them is actually open for visitors as well (in Lichterfeld near Cottbus).
A friend spent years working in Bone Valley associated with mining. I’ve visited it only a few times and it took me maybe five years in Florida to realize that the place even exists!
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 The logistics for those moves are a little insane as well. Pre-position underground power outlets, prepare highways and rail lines to be crossed by something outside all load assumptions, take down high voltage lines...
Looking at a map i realized this is SUPER close to Wölirtz. Hope you took the oportunity to go there while you were there cause they have some amazing historical stuff in their big park. :)
The entire Leipzig region is full of mostly defunct pit mines that have been converted into lakes over the past decades (it's a bit slower of a process than filling a bathtub), fantastic places for recreation by the way, and in tourist advertising they call it Leipziger Neuseenland as a play on the word Neuseeland which is German for New Zealand, but it literally translates to "new lakes land". Also Tim, your foreign pronounciations are incredibly good, practically spot on almost every time, even the stupid Umlaute.
It's probably just as well Colin "add lightness" Chapman is no longer with us because that Lotus would surely have caused havoc with his blood pressure. Great video as always Tim. Thanks to you both and congratulations to Niamh.
Nice video from my home region, great to see that you've been there! But to go on with a bit of pedantry: The map shown at 2:40 does depict the GDR of the early days with the states (Länder) still intact, but they where actually suspended in 1952 already and substituted by 14 districts (Bezirke). Also, the Saarland became part of Western German in 1957 and Baden-Württemberg was formed in 1952 as well.
"They decided to leave the old excavators as a reminder of industrial heritage and event backdrop". Also, dismantling them would, ahemm, take some effort! Very COAL machines! 👍🙂
I got to take a 'ride' in a similar machine (bucket-wheel excavator) in the Latrobe Valley, Victoria, Australia in the early 90s. It was quite weird being up in the operator's cabin, the equivalent of being up in a 7 story building, as it began to move. Also weird was walking up the stairs to get to the cab, and later going up the same stairs to get out. Yes, it was digging up at ground level when I entered, but when leaving, the bucketwheel and cab were working the base of the cut. The stairs move up and down to bridge between the moving cab and the fixed part of the machine.
5:20 I fully expected you to say "...because nobody knows what else to do with them" but then my fellow germans surprised me by being cool for a change.
Finally, the intersection of two of my hobbies... drifting and random pedantry! I recognised Ferropolis in the thumbnail straight away from watching Drift Masters. You can even see the track in most of the shots, complete with rubber from the latest events. Some time I'd love to go and see it all in person!
Hope they have also audiovisual exhibition of how these moved around. Bet that some proper sound and earth shaking would double or triple the impressiveness.
I visited the Hambach mine this summer and saw the 293 in the distance and it still looked absolutely massive. It's such a shame you can't book a tour to see it up close.
It's not just an event venue for electronic festivals, but also for metal festivals. I've visited the Full Force Festival there twice. At night when the machines are lit up the view is absolutely breathtaking.
Actually you can get close to the, even bigger, machines still in service. There are multiple tours you can book and they take you right into the mine pit next to the big machines. You can even leave the "bus" (really a converted lorry) and experience the machines up close. I once went to a mine just 120 km east of Gräfenhainichen, but I'm pretty sure there are also some tours offered in the mines east of Aachen, which would be much closer to France. Those west German mines have the bigger baggers, but the east German mines have the biggest movable land objects on earth. Those are the enormous movable conveyer bridges. It has to do with the coal mines in the west being bigger and to big for conveyor bridges. The Absetzer don't dispose dirt after sorting. There are actually two kinds of baggers. The biggest do dig up the dirt layer on top of the coal. That dirt is disposed by the Absetzer into the already dug up part of the pit. A second bunch of baggers dig up the actual coal layer and dump it to conveyors that transport it to mine trains or directly to the power plants. It's really interesting to so the whole thing in action, I really recommend taking a tour.
These playground excavators are fantastic! Let just say there have been visits to playgrounds with my daughter which had one of these. And of course I had to personally check them before I let my kid use it 🙂
8:44 Those little baggers are one of the joys of having kids in Germany: they're in every playground and you get to show the little buggers how the model baggers work.
There were a few opportunities to see a few of these open pit excavators up close. One shows the documentary “Ein Riese zieht um” (1983) which can be found on RUclips. German audio and probably no subtitles. I think there are one or two similar documentaries from later years that were shown on German television at some point, but I don't know the titles and don't know if they can even be found on RUclips. I remember a film where two or three excavators or similar equipment traveled together, I guess it was sometime in the 1990s.
@@mifiwi3438 Translating it without any of the backstory is really pointless... So the _actual_ saying in german is "Wer ander'n eine Grube gräbt, fällt selbst hinein", which means "Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein" (translation from the King James bible) and is a passage taken from the Book of Proverbs, chapter 26, vers 27. It's a common phrase in german to basically say that karma is a b*tch. The humorous (and rhyming) malapropism of that saying is not a common saying, but just used as a joke. It has even evolved a step further as now there is also the version "Wer ander'n eine Bratwurst brät, hat ein Bratwurstbratgerät." (He who frys a _Bratwurst_ has a _bratwurst_ frying apparatus), in which the last word is a complete neologism in mockery of the "pit-digging apparatus" line.
@@QemeH Thank you for the extended background. I sort of went with the simplest explanation, since "digging a pit for someone" has the same basic meaning in English. And whenever I heard someone say it, it was a mockery of German in general, but yeah, should've expanded on that. The "Grubengrabgerät" variant is not uncommon though, heard it at least once in the wild and saw it once on a sign.
I can just imagine in a post Apocolypse movie like Mad Max that one of these would be the villians main base, driving around crushing stuff under its tracks
so long as there is a functional power-substation nearby for this thing to plug into? sure. Why not. Part of me thinks these were part of the inspiration for the Mortal Engines book series.
@@Alex-cw3rz It hasn't. Nor should it. Inspiration is not a bad thing. Blatant copying, however, is. But that is not the case with those books. I said inspired by, and i stand by that. After all we are not talking a mobile piece of industrial machinery there, we are talking a mobile f*in city. Or technically cities-plural.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 If it WAS a Mad Max movie, there would probably be a few steam locomotives tacked on to a side providing power, fueled by a slightly but not-quite-detonated nuke.
Tim is showing us cool stuff, and Tim is showing us cool places. Tim is talking about history and FCKIN trains. Tim has interesting and well-edited videos. Let's be like Tim, and THANK YOU, Tim. I Love your videos. 😊😊
There is another one in Brandenburg near the A13 (Berlin-Dresden), "Besucherbergwerk F60" where you can climb the Bagger and walk on it - if you don't fear heights.
I love this, great job by both. If peopl still want more, or if they don't feel up to a one hour walk, there is a smaller park with two - admittedly smaller - mining machines on the outskirts of Leipzig, the Bergbau-Technik-Park Leipzig.
What a coincidence. Just two weeks ago I went to a similar, albeit smaller place just outside of Leeds in the UK. It's named St Aidan's and was also an old open cast mine. They transformed it into a wetland nature reserve which is operated by the RSPB. Although there is only one monster mining machine there near the café/car park. Wonderful walking routes and a great variety of birds. The highlight was a heron perched on a 'No Fishing' sign.
Clearly the Germans have a thing for giant machines. Herrenknecht AG makes the giant tunnel boring machines you see in such projects as Crossrail in London and the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel in Norfolk, VA, among many others. The one in Norfolk weighs 19.8 MILLION pounds. Great video Tim, as always!
DIGGY DIGGY HOLE Brothers of the mine rejoice! (Swing, swing, swing with me!) Raise your pick and raise your voice! (Sing, sing, sing with me!) Down and down into the deep Who knows what we'll find beneath? Diamonds, rubies, gold, and more Hidden in the mountains store
The company running the open-pit mines, RWE Power, offers tours to the Monster Mining Machines like Bagger 288. You would be part of a of group of visitors and keep some distance but you get some filled roles/buns and coffee later on together with some context like history and usage as part of a (lengthy) presentation.
Hi Tim! I recently knew about a small Spanish football team called Mensajeros whose football field is ON THE ROOF OF A MALL! I thought this was one of those rare cases you might be interested in... maybe we'll have Tim Traveller in Spain for the 2nd time? :)
I kept expecting the Hood to appear around a corner, followed closely by Scott Tracy in Thunderbird 1. You never disappoint us, Tim, but you keep making my bucket list longer and longer!
So sad to see Big Muskie on that list at the start of the video. There was a group that was raising money to turn it into a museum after it was decommissioned, but it was scrapped too quickly for that to happen. I was lucky enough to actually see it in operation, and from a reasonably close distance too. And also to play in it’s old, discarded bucket (the size of a house). That one was also electrically powered, but instead of moving around on crawler treads, it would just pick itself up and set itself down a short distance away. Also, it just had the one huge bucket instead of a wheel or chain of smaller ones.
Oooh, I've been here a couple of times. Many moons ago when I used to drive tour buses for the music industry. It's very difficult to appreciate the size of these machines unless you've actually seen them, they truly are enormous. p.s. I never needed festival tickets to get in.... obviously 😉
One slight correction: they don't just have the 5 big diggers, they also have some of the smaller machines used in the mine, like huge dozers, rail shifting machines, and even a mobile crane built out of a repurposed T34. Definitely worth seeing
I love the Bagger 288 piano version in the background. These easter eggs really make your channel so unique.
BAGGER 288 BAGGER 288 BAGGER BAGGER
Same. I haven't seen that video in years, but I recognized the song almost immediately.
Havent seen even half a minute of the video, and already a banger by Bagger.
Hearing those first few tones immediately had me cackling. 😂
I'd _really_ like a full piano version of the song
You know what is the best part of your content, Tim?
It isn’t the interesting diversity of amazing places you keep visiting. It isn’t your soothing voice and kind demeanor.
It is the piano-covers of niche and old cartoons you keep hiding within the soundtrack of your videos. Did you think you could put the theme of Noah’s Island into the video without me noticing?
I wouldn't go as far as calling that the main draw of the channel, but yeah... I also quite enjoy the mini game of "find the funny comment this musical reference plays on the video footage" whenever I'm watching. I mean, some things are blindly obvious (Thomas the Tank Engine when a steam train drives by), but others are so subtle, I often only hear it on the second or third go. Good fun :)
@@QemeH I perked up on the QI tune.
@@QemeH As a non-Englishman, I pray for Tim to reveal, one day, ths list of the musical covers he uses for each of his videos : I want so much to get all these cultural references. Why doesn't he write that in the video description, for example ?
I never noticed there was music
Animals of Farthing Wood still gives me chills when I think of the opening credits
2:09 I don't know whether this was intended as a subtle reference (and if so, bravo), but the phrase "Making a mountain of of a molehill" in German would be written as "Making an elephant out of a mosquito".
Can we take a moment to appreciate the excellent editing.
I always do, that's why it takes three times as long to watch Tim's videos than their actual length. Watch video, take a pause to marvel at the editing skill, watch it again for puns, jokes and references (with subtitles on).
yes.
Never clicked a video so fast! Finally a place not far from my hometown :D
Feropolis is indeed a impressiv site. I need to go there again...
Tim you need to visit the F-60 now! Not far, about 60km to the east from Feropolis in southern Brandenburg, you can visit a structure called F60.
Basicly a selfdriving 500m long and 79m high conveyer bridge, once used In mining! (It is called the "lying down eifeltower" for a reason)
You can explore the whole structure by a guided tour :)
Want to take a wild guess where I went the day after I filmed this? :D
@@TheTimTraveller I think I can say/write we are all looking forward to it.
@@TheTimTraveller very nice! Und Glück auf! =)
another local here, from Hoyerswerda, wanted to mention exactly this. btw: you can visit most active mines via free tours from the owners, might just call their PR department. oh, and if you wanna see Communist "Model cities", visit Hoyerswerda Neustadt or Eisenhüttenstadt
@@PG-nf9wx +1
I really like the use of "bagger 288" in the beginning.
Actual, Genuine LOL's at the opening tune... Bagger 288!
Haha I knew I recognized it! Those were the best days of the internet, huh
Queensland here. I thought walking draglines were really big, but these machines are truly the queens of drag.
To be fair, Big Muskie was 2000 tons short of the Bagger 293, but consumed 2MW more.
And it could walk, and probably dance, but no one tried.
In Hambach, they have a whole fleet of those. But fair's fair. If you drop the Eiffeltower in that hole, only the top would stick out. The hole is 285 meters deep. Or about 900 feet. Seeing these huge Schaufelradbaggern up close is sort of breathtaking. Even the chain sections of the tracks are twice an average persons height. And when you see them from the top of the hole, they look like ants.
Interestingly, there was also a railroad museum nearby Ferropolis, where they showed rail vehicles that where used to transport all the coal out of the mine. Sadly, it had long be closed since 2007.
Right in the center of the USA, in a tiny town called West Mineral, Kansas stands Big Brutus. It's a long retired dragline shovel the size of an office building. They have a few other large excavators as well with the bonus that you can go inside and explore. Yep, even in Big Brutus himself - you climb up inside and you can give yourself a tour, sit in the operators seat - and back in the day you used to be able to climb out the boom (now closed for an obvious reason). There isn't a good way to get to it if you're not already in the area, but if you are take the drive. Every person that's grown up within 100 miles of Big Brutus has been there for at least one school trip.
Ahhh yes... Ferropolis and Drift Master European Championship. A match made in heaven. The venue is absolutely crazy when those pro spec cars bang and pop around it.
What better way to celebrate your engagement than to go and look at big diggers with a strange English man and leave the fiancé at home. 😂
at least he wasn't a strange French man... ;)
Maybe he is the fiancé? ;)
We met Julian in the video about the Berlin rail yard nature reserve.
Why can't people in relationships do activities separate from their partners or hang out with other friends?
I performed at the Full Force festival on those grounds in 2019. I spent more time looking at the machines and reading about them than I did watching the other bands at the festival. These machines are marvels of engineering.
That's quite a flex, I just went there as a visitor lol
Congratulations, Niamh!
Tim, I really “dig” your content and try to “spread” it around to my friends.
Musical selections this week were definitely rather good.
And Quite Interesting, too!
Of all the niche musical references, playing the Bagger 288 song from Rathergood has to be one of the nichest. Haven't thought about that tune in years. Bravo.
If you are interested, in Czechia, there is a museum on a bucket-wheel excavator measuring 52 meters tall, weighing around 4000 tonnes. So still not Bagger 293 territory , but almost twice the size of the one from the video.
He's been to Czechia a few times already, so I'm sure he'd be interested!
You mean to tell me the biggest moving machines on the planet... are plugged into the wall like a bog standard electric lawn mower!!! Madness
Just like Evangelions, albeit probably with less psychologically-traumatized operators.
Yes, but with a slightly thicker cable.
@@ZGryphon Not sure about the last part.. the GDR WAS a communist police-state after all...
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 That's true, but even under that system, I doubt more than one or two bagger operators suffered similar levels of cosmic dread. :)
@@ZGryphon Frankly? I don't even WANT to know.. That said, there aren't that many Evangelion-pilots either if i remember correctly.
Calling the large machine a chonker was my favourite part :D
It's bizarre how they're these massive vehicles, all this machinery involved in working and moving, and then on top of all that, there's just like a normal office building for the crew. Because it's not like it has to be aerodynamic, and all the mechanical stuff is kept separate from where the crew has to hang out, so it can just be a normal building kinda thing.
The closest we will get to warhammer 40k
Also You you cant realy build an office building in a mine that constantly changes
@@emergcon Super easy, barely an inconvenience :-D Just attach it to the big tracked vehicle.
@@jochenkraus7016 Thight.
The Mosquito has its name from the excavation rail looking like the proboscis of an insect - then again, it also looks like an elephant trunk so I can subscribe to your naming there.
As for VEB: That stands for Volkseigener Betrieb, meaning a people owned company/corporation, which is a partial joke in itself, as private possession was "somewhat" regulated in the DDR. And obviously, knowing how the DDR worked, "Volkseigen" meant "owned by the only truly permitted party".
I visited the place in 2017, and back then, there were no elevators, so props for the upgrade, Ferropolis.
On a slight note, the Mad Max/Sad Dragon would drop whatever load it got fed on two adjacent trains below the main construction, being operated directly from above by hand, imagine that noise.
Having added that pedantly, as always a great documentation, and a must visit when in the vicinity.
The rendition of the Bagger 288 song in the background was a fantastic touch.
I met Niamh the other month! I was totally starstruck. Congratulations to her on the engagement!
Living in Berlin, I have been to a music festival this summer there. It was REALLY impressive, and REALLY well decorated. They do a couple of different festivals each summer there. We did not camp there though, we slept in the fancy resort hotel in Gröbern (10 minute taxi ride). Can recommend!
As a German I feel obligated to say: "That's not a Bagger, *this* is a Bagger!"
“Hold mein Oktoberfest”
the beginning actually made me cry 😥 great vid
Very interesting!
There is actually another similar park just south of Leipzig. They only have two Baggers, but theirs are even bigger (weight wise)
And there are way more of the old open mines that turned into recreation areas with lakes there!
Bugger me, there’s bigger baggers?
@@rhubarbjin 😄
@@rhubarbjin Bigger ones are mentioned in the video. There are three mines a bit further to the west between Cologne and Aachen.
I you heard about the protests about the Hambach forest and where Greta went, yes, exactly there.
Germany is so great at re-purposing aging industry. Old mine with some massive excavators: concert hall and drift track, and let the curious people get right up to them. In America the whole area would get fenced and you would be arrested for getting close because it’s “dangerous”
Surely there is a German compound word for "Museum of Monster Mining Machines"
"Monsterbergbaumaschinenmuseum" does not sound right. But this is a "Bergbaumschinenmuseumsaustellungsfuehrungsvideo".
You could translate it literally to "Museum für Monster-Bergbaumaschinen" or use the compound word "Monsterbergbaumaschinenmuseum" which would simply be "Monster Mining Machines Museum".
@richardharrold9736 If you go the sane German route it would be MBMM or MBbMM. If you go the bureaucratic German route it would be MonBergbMaschMu. Still better than Russian acronyms though.
Everything is better than russia.
@richardharrold9736 I'd guess "MBbmM" (as it would probably be more common to use hyphens to describe such a "Monster-Bergbaumaschinen-Museum"). But I also like "MfMBbm". You could also slap on an FG for "Ferropolis Gräfenhainichen".
Fun fact: Ferropolis is part of the ERIH ("European Route of Industrial Heritage"). Your guess how that would fit into the acronym 😆
@mifiwi3438 I really like your "MonBergbMaschMu", that really sums up the weird acronyms quite nicely 😂
It's the famous square-cube law. While the surface of an object grows by square, its volume (and usually its weight) grows by cube.
Which means a 1x1 m sheet of paper weighs 8 times more than a 50x50 cm sheet of the same paper.
Pretty awesome concert venue, too. They look even more awesome when illuminated at night. 🤩
The images at 5:23 do not really do it justice.
I enjoyed my visit at Ferropolis. Very impressive. Also south of Berlin is the insanely large Förderbrücke F60 in Lichterfeld. Worth a visit.
Congratulations, Niamh & Julian!
The running gag of the QI music on pedantry corner is just so perfect. :D
There used to be a massive (in UK scale) open pit coal mine a few miles from where I grew up, and as the mine was at the top of the valley, the digger was massive and terrifying sight on the horizon. Local legend has it, that in order to dispose of the machine when the mine was exhausted, they simply drove it into the hole and buried it. The mine has mostly been erased from the landscape now (apart from the OS map showing that it is several square miles of completely level ground in an otherwise undulating landscape) and now has a massive wind farm on top. So, we’ll never know.
Great as always. That cable you were looking at with the Earth, Wind and Fire is called a Powerlight cable and is used to connect to the Electric Universe.
I grew up in the (rather obscure, even to natives) Bone Valley of Florida, where a lot of open pit phosphate strip mining takes place. Always loved seeing the huge drag lines do their work. The Germans make our massive machines look puny in comparison.
As Tim said, the ones you saw there are still on the "smaller" end of things though. What is particularly astonishing is that these behemoths were (and are) capable of moving to different locations as well - albeit incredibly slowly at less-than-walking-pace. Imagine that for a moment. A vehicle that weighs as much as some warships that can move over land. Granted, it is dragging the mother of all extension cords behind it as it does, but the point is that it CAN move at all.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 Also weight is just one metric. The overburden conveyor bridge F60 (of which five were built in East Germany) is the largest (but obviously not heaviest) movable machine ever built, with a length of 502m and a height of 79m surpassing even the largest ships in both length and height. And unlike Bagger 288 and 293 which are still in active service one of them is actually open for visitors as well (in Lichterfeld near Cottbus).
A friend spent years working in Bone Valley associated with mining. I’ve visited it only a few times and it took me maybe five years in Florida to realize that the place even exists!
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 The logistics for those moves are a little insane as well. Pre-position underground power outlets, prepare highways and rail lines to be crossed by something outside all load assumptions, take down high voltage lines...
@@tz8785 yep
Looking at a map i realized this is SUPER close to Wölirtz. Hope you took the oportunity to go there while you were there cause they have some amazing historical stuff in their big park. :)
The entire Leipzig region is full of mostly defunct pit mines that have been converted into lakes over the past decades (it's a bit slower of a process than filling a bathtub), fantastic places for recreation by the way, and in tourist advertising they call it Leipziger Neuseenland as a play on the word Neuseeland which is German for New Zealand, but it literally translates to "new lakes land".
Also Tim, your foreign pronounciations are incredibly good, practically spot on almost every time, even the stupid Umlaute.
Converted. Ist Not like the whole ruhrgebiet would drown without constant pumping.
It's probably just as well Colin "add lightness" Chapman is no longer with us because that Lotus would surely have caused havoc with his blood pressure.
Great video as always Tim. Thanks to you both and congratulations to Niamh.
That subtle song in the background *chefs kiss*. Forever in your debt Bagger 288
As always a great video and wonderful break for my day. Congratulations Naimh.
Nice video from my home region, great to see that you've been there!
But to go on with a bit of pedantry: The map shown at 2:40 does depict the GDR of the early days with the states (Länder) still intact, but they where actually suspended in 1952 already and substituted by 14 districts (Bezirke).
Also, the Saarland became part of Western German in 1957 and Baden-Württemberg was formed in 1952 as well.
"They decided to leave the old excavators as a reminder of industrial heritage and event backdrop". Also, dismantling them would, ahemm, take some effort! Very COAL machines! 👍🙂
Love the small wink to the Bagger 288 - Metal music at the end.
I shall have to add this to my bucket list.
I got to take a 'ride' in a similar machine (bucket-wheel excavator) in the Latrobe Valley, Victoria, Australia in the early 90s. It was quite weird being up in the operator's cabin, the equivalent of being up in a 7 story building, as it began to move.
Also weird was walking up the stairs to get to the cab, and later going up the same stairs to get out. Yes, it was digging up at ground level when I entered, but when leaving, the bucketwheel and cab were working the base of the cut. The stairs move up and down to bridge between the moving cab and the fixed part of the machine.
Lovely rendition of Bagger 288 at the beginning!
5:20 I fully expected you to say "...because nobody knows what else to do with them" but then my fellow germans surprised me by being cool for a change.
Finally, the intersection of two of my hobbies... drifting and random pedantry! I recognised Ferropolis in the thumbnail straight away from watching Drift Masters. You can even see the track in most of the shots, complete with rubber from the latest events. Some time I'd love to go and see it all in person!
Hope they have also audiovisual exhibition of how these moved around. Bet that some proper sound and earth shaking would double or triple the impressiveness.
I visited the Hambach mine this summer and saw the 293 in the distance and it still looked absolutely massive. It's such a shame you can't book a tour to see it up close.
Congrats to your friends on their engagement, and thanks for adding YET ANOTHER place in Germany to this American Horsepower Addict's bucket list.
Congratulations Niamh!
It's not just an event venue for electronic festivals, but also for metal festivals. I've visited the Full Force Festival there twice. At night when the machines are lit up the view is absolutely breathtaking.
Also hip hop festivals, I would argue most famously so - The Splash festival is Germanys biggest hip hop festival.
Actually you can get close to the, even bigger, machines still in service. There are multiple tours you can book and they take you right into the mine pit next to the big machines. You can even leave the "bus" (really a converted lorry) and experience the machines up close. I once went to a mine just 120 km east of Gräfenhainichen, but I'm pretty sure there are also some tours offered in the mines east of Aachen, which would be much closer to France. Those west German mines have the bigger baggers, but the east German mines have the biggest movable land objects on earth. Those are the enormous movable conveyer bridges. It has to do with the coal mines in the west being bigger and to big for conveyor bridges.
The Absetzer don't dispose dirt after sorting. There are actually two kinds of baggers. The biggest do dig up the dirt layer on top of the coal. That dirt is disposed by the Absetzer into the already dug up part of the pit. A second bunch of baggers dig up the actual coal layer and dump it to conveyors that transport it to mine trains or directly to the power plants.
It's really interesting to so the whole thing in action, I really recommend taking a tour.
They mined brown coal (Lignite), didn't they?
Yep. Not sure they also dug up regular coal, but brown coal is what they were (and some still are) mostly used for.
Yes, and they still do.
These playground excavators are fantastic! Let just say there have been visits to playgrounds with my daughter which had one of these. And of course I had to personally check them before I let my kid use it 🙂
8:44 Those little baggers are one of the joys of having kids in Germany: they're in every playground and you get to show the little buggers how the model baggers work.
This was so fun! I loved the back and forth you had with Niamh.
Thanks for reminding me how great the Bagger 288 song is. Love your videos.
There were a few opportunities to see a few of these open pit excavators up close. One shows the documentary “Ein Riese zieht um” (1983) which can be found on RUclips. German audio and probably no subtitles.
I think there are one or two similar documentaries from later years that were shown on German television at some point, but I don't know the titles and don't know if they can even be found on RUclips. I remember a film where two or three excavators or similar equipment traveled together, I guess it was sometime in the 1990s.
This reminds me of the old German saying:
„Wer andern eine Grube gräbt, der braucht ein Grubengrabgerät!“
Translated for non-Germans: "If you dig a pit for someone else, you'll need a pit-digging apparatus" (though it rhymes in German).
Well that goes without saying...
@@mifiwi3438 Translating it without any of the backstory is really pointless...
So the _actual_ saying in german is "Wer ander'n eine Grube gräbt, fällt selbst hinein", which means "Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein" (translation from the King James bible) and is a passage taken from the Book of Proverbs, chapter 26, vers 27. It's a common phrase in german to basically say that karma is a b*tch. The humorous (and rhyming) malapropism of that saying is not a common saying, but just used as a joke. It has even evolved a step further as now there is also the version "Wer ander'n eine Bratwurst brät, hat ein Bratwurstbratgerät." (He who frys a _Bratwurst_ has a _bratwurst_ frying apparatus), in which the last word is a complete neologism in mockery of the "pit-digging apparatus" line.
@@QemeH Thank you for the extended background. I sort of went with the simplest explanation, since "digging a pit for someone" has the same basic meaning in English. And whenever I heard someone say it, it was a mockery of German in general, but yeah, should've expanded on that. The "Grubengrabgerät" variant is not uncommon though, heard it at least once in the wild and saw it once on a sign.
Been there yesterday, great location! Thank you for showing such sights in my home country
From the Popular Mechanics archive I found a early bucket wheel excavator circa 1930 in Dallas. We were moving a river that was inconvenient.
I can just imagine in a post Apocolypse movie like Mad Max that one of these would be the villians main base, driving around crushing stuff under its tracks
so long as there is a functional power-substation nearby for this thing to plug into? sure. Why not. Part of me thinks these were part of the inspiration for the Mortal Engines book series.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 yeah well when has that stuff got in the way of these kinds of stories
@@Alex-cw3rz It hasn't. Nor should it. Inspiration is not a bad thing. Blatant copying, however, is. But that is not the case with those books. I said inspired by, and i stand by that. After all we are not talking a mobile piece of industrial machinery there, we are talking a mobile f*in city. Or technically cities-plural.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 If it WAS a Mad Max movie, there would probably be a few steam locomotives tacked on to a side providing power, fueled by a slightly but not-quite-detonated nuke.
just imagine all the working that it took to design and build those massive machines !Love that great lake and very cool museum !
Tim is showing us cool stuff, and Tim is showing us cool places. Tim is talking about history and FCKIN trains. Tim has interesting and well-edited videos. Let's be like Tim, and THANK YOU, Tim. I Love your videos. 😊😊
Brilliant. . I am always amazed how you find out about these interesting items. .
Thank you for your video 👍👍
There is another one in Brandenburg near the A13 (Berlin-Dresden), "Besucherbergwerk F60" where you can climb the Bagger and walk on it - if you don't fear heights.
This is the content I come to youtube for. 10/10 another excellent video Tim!
Reminded of "Big Geordie", a machine so big it didn't have wheels but it "walked".
I am glad you are aware of the Bagger 288 song.
I love this, great job by both. If peopl still want more, or if they don't feel up to a one hour walk, there is a smaller park with two - admittedly smaller - mining machines on the outskirts of Leipzig, the Bergbau-Technik-Park Leipzig.
What a coincidence. Just two weeks ago I went to a similar, albeit smaller place just outside of Leeds in the UK. It's named St Aidan's and was also an old open cast mine. They transformed it into a wetland nature reserve which is operated by the RSPB. Although there is only one monster mining machine there near the café/car park. Wonderful walking routes and a great variety of birds. The highlight was a heron perched on a 'No Fishing' sign.
Like that rock version of O Fortuna! Really enjoyed the tour of these Monster Mining Machines, Great video.
Clearly the Germans have a thing for giant machines. Herrenknecht AG makes the giant tunnel boring machines you see in such projects as Crossrail in London and the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel in Norfolk, VA, among many others. The one in Norfolk weighs 19.8 MILLION pounds. Great video Tim, as always!
What's that in Euros?
@@andershansson2245Should be around 22.68 Million Euros with todays exchange rate
thank you for spewing on about german diggers. i really dug it
Congratulations TTT Berlin Correspondent Niamh!
DIGGY DIGGY HOLE
Brothers of the mine rejoice!
(Swing, swing, swing with me!)
Raise your pick and raise your voice!
(Sing, sing, sing with me!)
Down and down into the deep
Who knows what we'll find beneath?
Diamonds, rubies, gold, and more
Hidden in the mountains store
brilliant as usual - thank you for showing us around
Excellent, definitely on my bucket list.
The company running the open-pit mines, RWE Power, offers tours to the Monster Mining Machines like Bagger 288. You would be part of a of group of visitors and keep some distance but you get some filled roles/buns and coffee later on together with some context like history and usage as part of a (lengthy) presentation.
Hi Tim! I recently knew about a small Spanish football team called Mensajeros whose football field is ON THE ROOF OF A MALL! I thought this was one of those rare cases you might be interested in... maybe we'll have Tim Traveller in Spain for the 2nd time? :)
I love how Tim clears everything up before people start asking questions, even about who his guest is 😂😂😂
Nice one Tim, love a bit of industrial machinery.
Congrats on the engagement 🙂
Today Tim takes a trip to see the Wretched Machinery from NieR: Automata
Tim better run up that bad boy in stilettos without breaking a sweat
Excellent really enjoyed watching this. I love looking at old machines.
I cannot express what an excited giggle I let out when I heard the cover of RatherGood's Bagger 288 started playing under the intro of the video 💜
Is there any part of Germany's industrial heritage that isn't used for raves? It seems like that's the main industry in Germany now days.
I kept expecting the Hood to appear around a corner, followed closely by Scott Tracy in Thunderbird 1. You never disappoint us, Tim, but you keep making my bucket list longer and longer!
See also the Bergbau-Technik-Park south of Leipzig!
Congrats on the engagement Niamh!
Love the Bagger 288 theme music at the start end end of the video.
I liked Schnaufelradbagger!
Lots of playgrounds in Germany have those little diggers, as does the large playground in Victoria Park in London.
So sad to see Big Muskie on that list at the start of the video. There was a group that was raising money to turn it into a museum after it was decommissioned, but it was scrapped too quickly for that to happen. I was lucky enough to actually see it in operation, and from a reasonably close distance too. And also to play in it’s old, discarded bucket (the size of a house). That one was also electrically powered, but instead of moving around on crawler treads, it would just pick itself up and set itself down a short distance away. Also, it just had the one huge bucket instead of a wheel or chain of smaller ones.
hell yes for the bagger 288 song background~
I just hope all machines like these will end up in a museum soon.
Oooh, I've been here a couple of times. Many moons ago when I used to drive tour buses for the music industry.
It's very difficult to appreciate the size of these machines unless you've actually seen them, they truly are enormous.
p.s. I never needed festival tickets to get in.... obviously 😉