A couple years ago on some random place on the intertubes I found this picture of a train which has crashed out the second-story window of a building of some sort. Anybody know what the story behind it is? The name on the building appears to say:
CHEMINS DE FER
DE L’OUEST
The locomotive has number 721 on the front and a manufacturer logo (?) that looks like it says QUEST. (Or maybe it says OUEST like the building.)
From a 1895 train derailemnt in Paris. Here’s the wikipedia article.
Google is your friend.
This accident happened on 22 October, 1895, at the Montparnasse Station in Paris. There was one fatality . . . a “news agent” who was standing at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Gare Montparnasse became famous for a derailment on 22 October 1895 of the Granville-Paris Express that overran the buffer stop. The engine careened across almost 30 metres (98 ft) of the station concourse, crashed through a 60-centimetre (24 in) thick wall, shot across a terrace and sailed out of the station, plummeting onto the Place de Rennes 10 metres (33 ft) below, where it stood on its nose. All on board the train survived, five sustaining injuries: two passengers, the fireman and two crewmembers; however, one woman on the street below was killed by falling masonry.[5] The accident was caused by a faulty Westinghouse brake and the engine drivers who were trying to make up for lost time.[6] The conductor incurred a 25 franc penalty and the engine driver a 50 franc penalty; he was also sent to prison for two months.
The picture of the locomotive standing on its nose appears on the cover of the album Lean into It from the hard rock band Mr. Big.
The story of the train crash and the picture feature in the 2007 children’s novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Much of the story is set in and around Gare Montparnasse.
Replicas of the train crash are recreated outside the Mundo a Vapor (“Steam World”) museum chain buildings in Brazil, at the southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, in the city of Canela.[7]
You people are my heroes.
I am going to start a rock band called Defenestrated Locomotive now.
Just don’t use the pic as your album cover.
Whoops! I should have read Shagnastys post.
Interestingly, “good album cover” was also my first reaction to seeing the photo.
This photo is on the front cover of one of my textbooks from college, entitled “An Introduction to Error Analysis.” 
I used the first edition published in 1982; I see that a second edition published in 1996 is still available here, and it still has the same cover photo.
I always thought that it was a perfect cover photo for the book.
I first encountered the picture in a Fark thread; it’s one of my favorite fail pics.
I remember a popular poster from my college days. It was a line drawing, depicting a train crash into a river (the bridge was out). The caption was “Oh, shit.”
The train looked very similar to this one. Does anyone else remember it? Was the poster image adapted from the photo? Or did it depict a different crash?
Now this bit caught me off guard…from what I was able to muddle from web translations, this is some kind of steampunk-ish museum…thing. Looks like an interesting place to visit, if I was ever in Brazil. Maybe someone’ll look into U.S. franchise options.
Now I know…
[RIGHT]…say it![/RIGHT]
Soon as I saw this photo: A Truck Dangled in Queens - The New York Times in the NY times, I was put in mind of the subject of this thread. When I googled “locomotive through window”, the first hit was this two year old thread. Well, now we can add defenestrated sanitation truck to defenestrated locomotive. The wiki article speculated that the latter may have contributed to the birth of surrealism.
If you want to see the recreation, go to Atrações, then hover the cursor over the entrance, Entrada.
It says Chemins de fer de l’Ouest. Raillways of the west. In Paris there are 4 train stations. The North (Gare du Nord), the South (Gare de Lyon), The East (Gare d’Austerlitz) and the West (Gare Montparnasse)
Actually, the vendor was in the right place - away from there. It was his wife that was killed.
