A few weeks ago, I was on the road quite early for capturing flowers right after sunrise. Unfortunately, they were not blooming when I arrived, because of the too cold temperature we had during the last couple of weeks.
On my way back, I stopped at this huge machine, standing in a vast hole in the ground. I’m standing at the edge of the hole. In the back, you can spot another of these machines right above the edge of the excavation. Also, compare it with the white car. This car is a pickup. So, it’s not that small. I’ve never before been so close to such a huge machine. It’s used as a stacker to put the unusable earth back in the hole because they only want to have the brown coal.
I already published images from that digging pit a couple of times. In this post, published about 10 years ago, you can get a bit of an overview. Or, here, you can see, how it looks at night. While you can here find an image of the hole taken with a fisheye lens.
Although I hate how they treat the earth so badly by grabbing brown coal from the ground for using it inefficiently to burn it for producing electricity power, I find these huge machines really fascinating. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to the day they are not needed anymore.
Take care!
MyBlog - solaner 
I saw these huge machines at work in a documentary on television. The created the biggest hole in Europe that can be seen from space.
Yep, that might be true. Only 3 men are working such a machine: 1 driver, 1 advisor/director and one mechanic for fast repairs. 7×24 365 days a year
Wow…there are so many industrial operations in the USA..mostly mining..that have HUGE machinery…giants stalk our Earth.
😊 I know, there are similar diggers in Australia and They were the biggest. But even these are huge when standing only a couple of dozen meters away.