An abandoned and beautifully decayed old train

There’s no shortage of abandoned homes and small settlements on these pages. Places that provide hints of stories, but little in the way of real facts. The train below, on the other hand, is very different.

Approaching the location there was the growing worry that what we were planning to photograph wouldn’t actually be there. On a trip several years ago we’d missed a similar find, as after being left abandoned for years, the locomotive we wanted to see had frustratingly been taken away mere months before our visit. Thankfully there wasn’t a repeat of that disappointment. Quite the opposite in fact, as the train turned out to be more impressive than either of us had dared to imagine.

Also, unlike those aforementioned former homes, there’s an easily pieced together backstory. The carriage was in use until 1985, but rather than being scrapped at the end of its scheduled life, it was restored, given a new home, and thus saved for posterity. The very same spot it still stands in today, only the museum that housed and maintained it closed for business around the turn of the century. A fate that also befell the line the train was once used on, as after beginning operations in 1923, it ceased the majority of its services in 1985, and then finally carried its last passengers on October 4th 1999.

All of which are interesting details, but what really sets the carriage apart, at least for me personally, is the incredible level of decay. A unique kind of beauty that made simply being there as the light slowly faded feel very special indeed.