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A few weeks back we posted the picture above to our Facebook page. It had just begun to circulate around the web. While it provided a nice laugh and I, like most of you, was certain it was a hoax, I knew nothing of the origin of the image. Now we have some answers courtesy of Marcus Wong from the site Waking up in Geelong.
Wong describes himself as a “train nut, amateur photographer, and software developer” from Melbourne, Austrailia.
About two weeks after the initial April 5 posting of the image on Facebook, Wong was able to track down details. The picture came from Tom Bongaerts, a firefighter in the small town of Bornem in Belgium. Wong, who unlike the editor of this rag, actually does a little research, found a follow-up post to the Facebook page of FireRescue1.com from Bongaerts (again, something I totally missed) that explains the mischief behind the picture:
Hey, this past week our funny photo went viral throughout the whole world. Thousands of shares and likes in many different countries! Once and for all: the picture was taken in Belgium, in a small village called Bornem. After a minor intervention, we had some time left near the railway to make this picture. Since there were no trains running at all for a week due to maintenance works, we can state that our joke was a real success! Thanks to our entire team, 2nd sqdn Firefighters Bornem!
You have to love the sense of humor of the Bornem firefighters to do something like that.
Wong also posted a video (below) showing what we all know would likely happen to the hose in the picture from Belgium. It’s a video from Hampden, Maine that I posted with another supply line versus train incident from Indianapolis last June.
