Artist surprised his statue was strong enough to catch a subway car

Maarten Struijs, the artist behind the Waalvisstaarten statues at De Akkers subway station in Spijkenisse, is surprised that his statue was strong enough to catch a subway when it crashed through a stop block at the station this morning. He called the image of the damaged subway balancing on a 10 meter high whale tale a work of art in itself.

"I'll make sure that I get a few photos. Because now it is at its best and it will look a lot less nice when they prop it up later," Struijs said to NOS. But propping it up is a must, he added. "It has been there for almost 20 year and then you actually expect the plastic to pulverize a bit."

According to Struijs, it is something of a miracle that the subway hit the statue just right to land exactly on top of it. When he heard of the crash, he expected that the statue would have collapsed.

The bizarre accident happened at 00:30 a.m. on Monday. The subway was at the end of its route, so there were no passengers on board. The driver was uninjured, but taken to hospital for a check up as a precaution.

Emergency services were still working on securing and recovering the subway at 2:00 p.m. They expected the operation to take hours yet.

The cause of the accident is not clear. The black boxes were recovered and were being examined. Investigators were also speaking to the driver.