[VIDEO] Timelapse: Open-Pit Mining at Tageau Garzweiler

Located in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany, Tageau Garzweiler is an opencast lignite mining operation to extract brown coal. The following video is a quick glimpse into the mammoth size and structure of the surface mine.

Operated by RWE AG, the mine consists of two parts: Garzweiler I east and Garzweiler II west.

Operations on Garzweiler II were commenced in 2006 and expected to last until 2045. The deposit is estimated to contain roughly 1.3 billion tons of lignite.

One of the unique aspects of the Tageau Garzweiler operation is the Bagger 288, which was built for the job of removing overburden before coal mining at the mine site.