00:00The F60 Conveyor Bridge is the world's largest movable machine.
00:06Only five of these exist worldwide.
00:09For decades, the bridge has transformed entire landscapes in Germany to expose coal seams.
00:16But the era of these steel giants is over.
00:28Bernhard Köche has been working in open-pit mining for 33 years.
00:33In his native East Germany, coal was the most important energy source.
00:38But times have changed.
00:40Today there are only three open-pit mines left, and they too will soon close.
00:44The coal seam here lies at a depth of 90 meters.
00:50Gigantic machines are in operation to remove the overlying earth.
00:58The largest of them is the F60 Conveyor Bridge.
01:02This one was the first of five ever built.
01:05A dinosaur that's been in operation for over 50 years.
01:15Technicians are still lubricating the tracks before it can start.
01:23Now they're starting the belts.
01:2743 shovels are beginning to move.
01:32So now you can see how the shovels engage and pull dirt from the bottom to the top.
01:37Into the channel, into the excavator.
01:39It falls over a chute onto the next conveyor belt.
01:42And finally it's dropped over there.
01:48Every second, a truckload worth of earth is being moved.
01:52Removing earth, loading it onto conveyor belts and dumping it on the other side of the pit.
01:58That's what the giant conveyor bridge is for.
02:01It's 24,000 tons of steel inch forward on rails at a pace of 5 kilometers per hour.
02:10Like a giant shovel, the F60 reshapes entire landscapes.
02:16Half an hour from the active pit rests another of these giant machines.
02:21This one out of service for many years already.
02:25Where a coal mine used to be, there's now a lake.
02:28And the bridge has become a museum.
02:32Andreas Bretin was an electrician here.
02:35Today he guides visitors around his former workplace, across the bridge,
02:39a walk of 500 meters, climbing up almost 80 meters high.
02:48You shouldn't have vertical up here.
02:50We're reviving the old technology to give guests an even closer look at what it was like back then.
02:56That's a lot of fun.
03:00The control room was the brains of the system.
03:07Careful at the conveyor, the belts are starting, careful at the conveyor, and that's how it would start.
03:14Today it might be a museum piece, but at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall,
03:19it was the finest thing the former GDR had to offer.
03:24The design of these steel giants is still considered a masterpiece of engineering.
03:33It was a challenge to build such a mobile structure of this size, of this sheer power.
03:39They reached the physical limits of steel construction.
03:42More, faster, higher would be impossible.
03:45Even if coal mining had continued, there wouldn't have been a larger structure.
03:51But the era of coal is now over.
03:53Germany is focusing on renewable energy for climate protection.
03:57The first of these five giants was recently demolished.
04:01Three, two, one, change!
04:17The conveyor bridge where Bernhard Köchel worked will likely meet the same fate in a few years.
04:22It brings a touch of melancholy to the miner.
04:30It took two and a half years to build this conveyor bridge.
04:34It contains vast amounts of steel and other technical equipment.
04:41Generations of miners earned their living there and supported their families.
04:49The lunar landscapes created by the F-60 will also disappear over time.
04:55The plan, to re-naturalize them as best as possible.
04:59number one, a few more.
05:02The new noble nationalists at the F-60.
05:04This system was able to renew their lives, and it wasangan of three times one.
05:04You can't go down to the route.
05:05For business owners or business owners of the world,
05:08We used to build these incredible elements of the natural power.
05:08The new people who have owned people and the governments of the world were a journey around and another.
Comments