“To our relief, the metro operator got out of the vehicle unharmed. He is doing well under the circumstances. There were no passengers present,” the company said.
An investigation is underway and RET is discussing how best to salvage the train, the company said.
The train burst through the buffers at the station, which is at the southernmost end of the Rotterdam metro system, and would have crashed more than 30 feet to the ground had it not landed on one of two whale tails installed by architect Maarten Struijs almost 20 years ago.
“I’ll make sure to get a few photos. Because now it is at its best, and it will look worse when they prop it up,” Struijs told Dutch national broadcaster NOS.
“I could never have imagined it.”
Struijs said he thought the tail, which is made of plastic, would have been damaged in the accident, “but that’s apparently not the case.”
Ruud Natrop, communications adviser for the Rotterdam-Rijnmond regional safety authority, told CNN the train is balancing 10 meters (33 feet) off the ground in a park by a pond.
“It is very difficult to place heavy cranes at this location,” said Natrop, who added that security services are monitoring the situation but no one knows how long a salvage operation will take.
Carly Gorter, a spokeswoman for the authority, told CNN that the first step is to stabilize the train so it doesn’t fall from its new perch on the artwork, which is named “Saved by the Whale’s Tail.”
“Yeah, it’s dangerous. At the moment it’s stable so that’s good, but it’s a risk,” said Gorter. “If the wind is blowing very hard, that’s a risk.”
Dutch subway train lands on giant whale tail sculpture after crashing through buffers
