Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Astounding Train Wrecks
These are wicked and miserable accidents and derailments, some of them large-scale, caused by a single error of machinist or controller, big enough to be recorded in history books... And yet, multitudes of bystanders keep looking upon such carnage with morbid fascination, lost in timeand perhaps in their mind, wondering what really took place and how the catastrophe unfolded.
Wreckage of Soviet Army train on the way to World War II battle lines, and a wreck of the German supply train:
Poor Thomas the Tank Engine... did this really happen? (ask Ringo Starr who did a narration on the original series) -
Some of the nameless Russian train wrecks (not much information about those, sadly). Pictures via Russian RailRoad Club:
"The general-purpose tank car in the photo below was being steam cleaned in preparation for maintenance. The job was still in progress at the end of the shift so the employee cleaning the car decided to block in the steam. The car had no vacuum relief so as it cooled, the steam condensed and the car imploded." Keep in mind that steam has around 1600 times the volume of condensed water - also see the video!
All over the place... (this accident happened in June 2006 in Toronto, Canada, no one was hurt) -
More than 1,000 repurposed New York City Subway cars were sunk off the eastern seaboard - to serve as a sort of a marine barrier, and as a playground for scuba divers:
These kinds of accidents often go "unsung" and unnoticed by the general public, and my guess is, a lot of them still happen, blamed on brakes, or human error:
This one has quite a ways to go down... "The high winds of 17 February 2006 have pushed this freight train off off of its tracks while it was crossing a bridge over the St-Laurence River on its way Montreal." -
These are not models, these are photos of the actual super-wreck (which happened in Galt IL, May 3, 2005) re-touched with Photoshop trickery:
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How Morgan Cars Are Made Out of Wood
The Morgan Motor Company located in Britain doesn’t change in a changing world. Not only it is still independent, but it also makes each car by hand. A base model is about $44,000, but some cars cost up to $300,000. And people wait for over a year to get their exclusive hand-built cars with the shell made out of metal and much of the vehicle made out of wood. Working on the wood interior, workers use metal shears to individually shape a hood because each car has to be different. Every year Morgan produces about 600 cars. The company will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2011. It has a long interesting history, because it is still run by the same family the Morgans. Founded by Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan known as “HFS”, it was then ran by his sonPeter, and now it is run by Charles, the son of Peter Morgan.