The Night Crawler

Laustiz, Germany

In Germany, lignite (brown coal) a form of coal so low in energy content that the added cost of transportation would render it uneconomic to mine, is extracted by tremendous teams of machines and moved via conveyor to the power station built adjacent to the mine. Different excavators remove successsive layers of overburden and place it via conveyor in an already mined area, in this location, Lausitz, the coal is exposed, extracted, and the trench continually moved.