A special meeting of an US and a German machine ...

[The German]

No activities here at the moment - ; - so I decided to show you some pictures of a special meeting of two special machines - an American and a German one.

Hope it will be of interest for you though it has nothing to do with passenger cars.

But first I only show you the first pic and ask you what kind of machines met here and how did they find together? I wonder if there is someone who will find out.

If there is no answer the next pic will show the same situation - only it´s to be seen a little bit more, so then someone must find the answer. But now here is the first photo. Next one will follow later. Last will be some more pictures which will make it clear for everyone.

[Centurion717273]

Giant Tunnel Digger - that is probably the meeting of two that started on different sides.

[The German]

Giant Tunnel Digger - that is probably the meeting of two that started on different sides.

No, no underground machinery !

[The German]

Okay, perhaps the first picture really is too difficult to get ideas, so here is the second one.

And tomorrow I´ll show you what happened.

[Smartin]

Is that a strip mining machine swallowing up a Caterpillar earth mover?

[The German]

Is that a strip mining machine swallowing up a Caterpillar earth mover?

Yes, Adam, that´s it ! :xyxthumbs:

A bucket wheel exavator caught the Caterpiller so that it came into the loading table where normally the mined out material is loaded to the conveyor belt.

It´s difficult to get such a machine back to the earths surface because this Cat has 32 tons weight (metric tons) ! Interesting to see the before and after pictures of such a Caterpillar earth mover.

The operator of the bucket wheel excavator didn´t notice the Cat early enough because his working house is located on one side of the big wheel and he only can see the other side with camera and screen. He might be inattentive some seconds ... . You can see this house on the 5th pic under the constuction which holds the wheel, behind the wheel (just between the burning lamp and the red car in the background).

Last pic here shows the bucket wheel excavator in total; here you can see how big it is. Such machines are used in the German lignite coal mines in the Rhine valley and in some eastern areas of Germany. They are exported to some other mines in the world too, but they are very rare because they need a conveyor belt system to let the mined out material flow out of the mine continiously so that these excavators can move up to 240 000 t a day. All this is very expensive of course and therefore this system is used only in great mining areas which will be in production for several years. Some of them are working in Canada for example but they are a little bit smaller.

Hope that this little special information with that little riddle at the beginning was interesting for everyone. It´s a very special machinery that was probably unknown to many of you until now so guess it might be interesting enough to fill a time of low activities at the forum.:rolleyes:

[WDR]

I'll bet the Cat operator is still cleaning his shorts.

[The German]

I'll bet the Cat operator is still cleaning his shorts.

Hahaha, that could have been , but the Cat driver had luck - he wasn´t in the Caterpillar earth mover when the excavator pulled it: he was standing aside for some reason but noticed the danger of that accident some moments before, raised his hands, waved them and pointed in the direction of the Cat for the excavator operator, but this man understood too late !
So the Cat drivers shorts kept clean.

[Robroy]

Interesting stuff Rolf, are you in the mining business or did you just happen to know about this anyway?

On another German-American subject:
I spent the weekend in Berlin and spotted this work of art in the middle of a roundabout.
It looks like two Cadillac’s from 69-70 which been partly covered by concrete. It was some kind of a gift from USA to Germany.
I was hopping you (or someone else) would be able to bring some more light on the subject….

[The German]

Per, you found an interesting detail of Germanys capital city. Saw it too some years ago. It was created by Wolf Vostell ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Vostell
http://www.answers.com/topic/wolf-vostell
... in 1987 when Berlin had its 750-years-festival (so it´s no gift from USA). He made it to denounce the cars traffic in Berlin and he did it in the way of the picture "The Naked Maja" of Goya (the famous painter). So it was and still is one of the most heavy discussed monuments in this city. In 2006 it was restored for 100 000 Euros so that it now looks like new. During the night it´s illuminated that everyone will see it all day round if passing the place where it is located.

When I looked for details now I found something more interesting for our group here than this monument! - Vostell also worked with some other cars to transform them to modern art; so once he transformed a Buick Centurion to a piano ...
http://www.classiccars.de/cccd/art/vostell/buick2.jpg
... unbelievable !
Here you will find more cars artworks of Vostell :
http://www.classiccars.de/cccd/art/vostell/

Here you get another view of the Buick piano. Another site tells us about it "Construyó el Fluxus Piano Buick (automóvil americano con piano incorporado en el lugar del motor y el teclado en el salpicadero)" which means that the piano is built into the room where the engine used to be and the keypad replaced the dashboard. - :
http://www.museovostell.org/coleccion1.htm
The keypad is shown on this site (4th picture) :
http://mar-ortega-2.blogspot.com/

And another link for information regarding the Vostell museum in Spain:
http://turismo-en.sigimo.com/museos/index.php?id=1008

So you are right, Per, it´s "another German-American subject" - a very special one - worth a visit (like you did). And also you are right with your assumption - I have good contacts to friends who are engaged in the mining industry.

[The German]

Just now I found a site with other famous cars artworks - a spanish one - :
http://comunidad.terra.es/blogs/dondestaeldeposito/archive/2008/10/19/delashormigasdetexasaldragndetarrasaautomvilescult uraypaisaje.aspx

Also very interesting ! - Hope those who can´t understand the Spanish language will use the Google translator - .

[Robroy]

I recognised the pict below with all the half buried Caddy’s which I found on that Spanish link you posted Rolf.
Isn’t that in Texas somewhere? Remember hearing about it a long time ago….

[The German]

I recognised the pict below with all the half buried Caddy’s which I found on that Spanish link you posted Rolf.
Isn’t that in Texas somewhere? Remember hearing about it a long time ago….

Read the text written to the pic (link above) :
>>Quizá mucho más famoso que el Ghost Parking Lot, sea el Cadillac Ranch de Amarillo, Texas, una instalación de un inconoclasta grupo artístico llamado Ant Farm. La instalación consiste en diez Cadillac, desde un Club Coupé de 1949 hasta un Sedán de 1963, con el morro enterrado en tierra y dejando asomar aproximadamente dos tercios de su cuerpo en un ángulo de sesenta grados. La impactante imagen, asociada al infinito paisaje de esa parte de Texas, constituye una de las obras de arte no convencionales más populares del siglo XX. El Cadillac Ranch, una muestra crítica en torno a la sociedad y el papel del automóvil, fue, paradójicamente, movido en 1997 dos millas al oeste de su ubicación original... para escapar de la expansión urbanística de Amarillo.<<

Google translated :
>>Perhaps more famous that the Ghost Parking Lot, is the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, a facility inconoclasta an art group called the Ant Farm. The installation consists of ten Cadillac, from a 1949 Club Coupe to a 1963 Sedan, with the nose buried in the ground and leaving peep about two thirds of his body at an angle of sixty degrees. The striking image, taken with the endless landscape of this part of Texas, is one of the artworks unconventional most popular of the twentieth century. The Cadillac Ranch, a sample critique on society and the role of the car, was, paradoxically, in 1997 moved two miles west from its original location ... to escape the urban expansion of Amarillo.<<