help me identify this machine

That photo - either taken in February 2001 or in June, 2004 - shows a bucket-wheel excavator, travelling from his old working place to a new one.
(Used for strip-mining operations, the largest earth-movers in the world.)

That's in Germany, between (roughly) Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle.

Thank you Mr. Hinteler!

I think that's the machine I saw in a video. It accidently got hold of a Caterpiller D6, chewed it up, and spit it out. You had to look close to see the dozer.

Was the driver inside of the Caterpillar?

Looks a little expensive.

Said by some to be the biggest moving machine build by humans. It is the bucket wheel excavator "Bagger 288" built by Krupp in Germany in 1978.

This machine (300 metres long, weight: 45,500 tons) is capable of moving on its treads to the various open-air mine locations.
The last such transition happened in 2001, when it crawled from one mine to the other - across 22 kilometers of fields, roads, railway crossings, villages and countryside... As it could not go around the obstacles, it headed in a straight line, so the workers prepared the way by piling up sand cushions on top of highways and train tracks, removing power-lines and seeding the fields with special grass to make its progress smoother.

It took them 3 weeks to move it.

It even caught a bulldozer









However there is a bigger machine.

The name of that epic structure is Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60 in Lichterfeld. This is 502 metres long, 202 metres wide, 80 metres high and weighs 11,000 tonnes. It was build in East Germany in 1991 by VEB TAKRAF Lauchhammer. After only 13 months of operation it was taken out of operation for energy-political reasons. The opencast mine at Klettwitz-Nord where the conveyor bridge was operating is closed. The bridge is owned now by the community and presented as the "Lying Eiffel Tower"





Here is a big hole, not dug by Bagger 288, in Siberia, one of the biggest man-made holes on Earth. This is a diamond mine near the town Mirny. It is 525 meters deep and 1.25 km in diameter.

whoa, fascinating machines. i want one, i want one!

The Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60 was built in from 1988 until 1991 on place, btw. It's 60 m high - thus F60.

However, it could move only (with a maximum 'speed' of 0.78 km/h [working speed 0.56km/h]) on rails.

In 2001, the Bagger 288 as well the Bagger 259 were moved from Berheim to Hambach and crossed a motorway on their way.

A Goggle-view of a 240.000 Bagger in Garzweiler.

F-60 in Welzow

It is a machine designed by the Germans to take the top off your breakfast egg.

It will not work if the egg is hard-boiled.

i don't care what it does. from the google earth photos it looks like it's just senselessly doodling in the soil, but even if that was so. How cool must it be do drive one?

It is my dear wife's ambition to drive one of these gigantic off-road earthmoving trucks.
She has already driven a big articulated truck.

She is slightly mad, so don't get in the way.

It's a potato peeler
But you can use it to core apples.

Perhaps the critter is a bit too conspicuous for a murder weapon..... and it would be difficult to clean afterwards.

<psst! I'm getting a little concerned about Noddy....>

Drew Dad--

Would you like to drop in for a nice cup of herbal tea? I make the blend myself.

Thanks, but I have plans that day.... <walks away quickly while looking over shoulder>

Drew Dad--

Just a little cup of comfort for the road....for the long, long road?

your "machine" appears to be some form of excavator probably used
in quarrying or open cast mining

Actually, the maschine was identified already. :wink: