Remembering the Whale’s Tail That Saved a Runaway Train!

Cast your minds back to a rather strange memory of a typical Monday morning in quiet Spijkenisse, a large town near Rotterdam. Imagine the scene on the Spijkenisse metro: a train hurtling toward the end of the elevated tracks at De Akkers station; this time, however, it just did not stop. For a brief, terrifying moment, the train went past the buffers and awaited the 30-foot drop…only for it to thud on the tail of a huge plastic whale! Yes, really.

The Sculpture Turned Unexpected Hero

The tail of the whale, appropriately named ‘Saved by the Whale’s Tail,’ had been there since 2002 as a quirky piece of public art at the end of the tracks. No one really expected the contraption to become a lifeline—least of all its creator, artist Maarten Struijs. “When plastic has stood for 20 years, you don’t expect it to hold up a metro train,” he later admitted, stunned.

But hold it up, it did, hanging precariously, its front end resting on the whale tail like something out of a ‘Die Hard’ movie scene. The driver, the only person on board, walked away unscathed.

“Like a Hollywood Movie”

Emergency crews found a rather surreal sight: a Spijkenisse metro train perched upon a whale.

“It’s like the scene of a Hollywood movie,” said Ruud Natrop, a local safety official. “Thank God the tail was there.”

The train remained cradled by the sculpture all night until the following day, drawing crowds of people and sparking an online frenzy, before the crew safely lowered it. The internet went nuts because it isn’t every day that a piece of public art becomes a metro saviour.

The Whale’s Finest Hour

An artistic sculpture was, in fact, the savior in this untimely disaster. So next time you pass by an odd piece of public art, stop and admire it-you never know when it may be waiting to shine.

Featured Image: Sneeuwvlakte, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons