One half of a derailed articulated auto carrier seen at Aachen West on 18 July
2007. After the first axle of the car (out of the picture on the right) had left 
the rails, this half of the car moved upon the other with it's buffer (between
the two parts there is a special coupling with just one buffer on each side).
The seperation required this half to be lifted further by hydraulic jacks, now
preparations to rerail it are going on. The girder visible under the end of the
car section obviously belongs to a device that is known as Deutschlandgerät
in Germany (the name does not come from the country, but from the
Maschinenfabrik Deutschland, which was an engineering works in Dortmund and
invented this device). It allows to lift a railway vehicle and shift it
laterally in the lifted position, using several hydraulic jacks (some of them
still missing in the picture).
<p>
Digital photo by
<a href="http://www-users.rwth-aachen.de/christoph.schmitz2/index.html">Christoph
Schmitz</a>
(<a href="mailto:christoph.schmitz2@post.rwth-aachen.de">christoph.schmitz2@post.rwth-aachen.de</a>)