Saturday, October 3, 2009

Annals of transportation (8).... truely lifeless

Remember 1984? One of the view places truly devoid of any life is probably the latest container terminal in Rotterdam harbour. All the cranes and trucks are moved automatically by sensors in the ground and chips in the containers. Even for maintenance, the trucks go to shed automatically. The only thing done by hand is to drive the trucks which deliver the containers into a siding where they can be reached by the cranes. And there the misfortune starts: on average three times a day the truck driver forgets to uncouple the containers from his truck and the truck is lifted up together with the container and - if he stays in the cabin - the mindless driver himself ....
And other unforeseen things happen.... the barrier visible in the water behind is for blocking oil form MSC Nikita. The container ship collided with another one in the North Sea and was so badly damaged that it had to be towed into the harbour, carefully unloaded to prevent it from breaking apart (lower picture on the right) and is being scrapped later

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