June 15th, 2008

I had originally posted this video back on June 15th, 2008 but the link is now dead. So I've uploaded it to YouTube so that it won't go dead on us again. It's clearly a tower crane on a travelling cross base going over. I can't tell if it's intentional or not. You would think not, but was it just happenstance that someone was videoing? Why does the guy at the end start sprinting towards the crane? It seems that the two action are contrary to each other in making assumptions.

Clearly the crane hit something. It should have been the end stops on the rails. Many Russian cranes have gone down due to the rails not having stops at all and so the trucks just run off the rails and sink into the soils. It's possible that this crane was being operated at the time, but I can't imagine an operator being quite so unaware of where the end of the tracks are. Could it have been blown that way? Were the traveler brakes not working well and the rail clamps not added for safety? I don't have anything but the video to go off of.