The next day we were joined by John Salomon who bravely led us through the rusty derp that is
Thyssen Sinterei in
Duisburg. It was curiously busy with a pornographic photoshoot and a copper thief both beavering away in their own respective, degenerative manners. Bypassing them, we tramped around in the dust pulling
immortal poses at every opportunity until a massive storm forced us to take cover under a tree for what seemed like an age.
“Set the Audi to warpspeed AutobahnKREUZ Herr Salomon...” next destination:
Zeche E and moar stocks and steam winders.
Rudi der Prinz.
Changeable weather, STAU and shit derps on the journey down to the Saar meant that we arrived at our primo destination of
Kohlenwasche GeeGee rather late on. Far and away my favourite site of the trip...
Schacht 4 (the larger stock on he right) at 90m is apparently the tallest headframe in the world. We climbed the 30 storey internal staircase with glee after contorting our way through a coal conveyor. The prospect of standing atop this monster was within grasp... only to be met with a very firmly locked door at the top. Some swearing and gnashing of teeth later, we climbed his baby brother (pictured left)
“There’s a mine over there duck”
This had closed a week previous and had an almost identical headstock to that at Zeche SE, alas, there was still much activity on site.
Once again we crossed frontiers, this time into France and on to
Mine W. This was already massively trashed and our headstock climb was aborted due to staircase failure. The French also have a different design for their Kaue cages which were shot at ISO 25600 due to a classic noob error.
Crossing into Luxembourg (AKA the land of bargain diesel) we had
Powerplant AD in our sights. Situated in a (very) live Steel works site, this required some dodging about. The main draw of this site is a
1920’s era steam turbine (not my picture) - Unfortunately the building is undergoing renovation and was full of blokes banging pipes. We had to make do with the Derpy boiler house which was a bit meh.
Back to rural France to check out a Gros Ouvrage of the Maginot line. Almost thwarted by a wild platoon of SecuriVACHES we tumbled our way into this maze of tunnels under the countryside.
Built to defend La France against the potential threat of
The Hun invasion following the first world war, this network of defensive bunkers weren’t all that effective against old Adolf in WW2.
Due to time constraints and a couple of unexplained happenings whilst down there, our visit here wasn’t a long one and was limited to the Caserne, workshops and powerhouse.