Abandoned Train Stations (US)

While there's no great lost continents left to discover, human expansion provides. Multiplying at an exponential rate, building over and around what already exists, fossilizing the past for future generations to discover.

I've always kept sites I've found myself secret, and I never myself publish anything that I think might be undiscovered or otherwise sensitive (the location of the Golden Tunnel, for instance). I only repeat what's already been made quite public. The less forgotten these places become, the more likely it is that the proper authorities will come bearing padlocks, barbed wire, and security cameras.

That said, abandoned train stations & tunnels from NYC. The same rules apply when you're trekking through the mountains, "Take only photos, leave only footsteps." Don't be an jerk.

Balestrino, Italy

44° 07' 27" N, 8° 10' 27" E

While my upcoming trip in February will probably not lead me into Europe any further west than Zagreb (and there are certainly a lot of abandoned castles and villages throughout the former Yugoslavia), a photoset of this little town on the Italian Riviera caught my eye the other day, and made me have second thoughts about not including a Europe leg.

Though the photoset would lead one to believe that the village is abandoned, from some brief Googling (including a very brief history on the town) it seems that Balestrino is indeed populated (~500). Checking the photos against Google Earth, it seems that the abandoned section is only the western part of town, south of the road (SP34) that bisects the village. Nevertheless, it's certainly on the list, and given it's proximity to the coast, it's certainly worth considering for a place to sleep that's out of the way, should I happen to find myself hitching from Genova to Monaco.

The website where I first found Balestrino, Abandoned But Not Forgotten, is now listed in the sidebar. Some of the pages have very little information, some without maps at all, which is of course half the fun. After all, if you want your sightseeing planned for you, Seattle has a splendid alternative.

An Eventual Masters Thesis, part 1

Maybe. I don't really know how I would pitch it, or plan its implementation, but I figure I have to put it out there... thesis squatting, of sorts. Mine!

        an abandoned city
    + extremely dangerous conditions
    + renewable energy experiment
    + potential interplanetary applications
    --------------------
    = heaps of sweet, sweet grant money, buckets of adventure,
          and a job anywhere I damn well please

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Welcome to Centralia, PA. (and a wicked ugly website)
40° 48' N, 76° 20' W

Ah, 1962. Bob Dylan's debut, the US levies a trade embargo against Cuba, DDT covers suburbia, and city policies of burning garbage... which ignited an exposed vein of coal which ran the length and width of the town. Oops. In 1984, Congress bought out most of the residents, except for a few yokels who stuck out the steady carbon monoxide poisoning and hundred-feet-deep sinkhole surprises until 1992 when Pennsylvania claimed eminent domain and condemned the town.

Apparently, burning garbage is a bad idea. Michigan had a much more effective trash disposal policy - just dump it in the swamps. No problem there, right? Right?

Still, with a group of adventurous folk organized like a glacier-walking trip (so as not to fall into sinkholes), plus gas masks (CO suffocation) and a couple burn kits, this could be quite the adventure. Even though most of the buildings have been demolished, there's sure to be quite a few left, and I did see one picture (though I don't know how recent) of the still-standing downtown...


Statement of Intent for an Eventual Masters Thesis
on the topic of Centralia and very alternative energy applications

So, keeping in mind that this thesis is only in the thinking-out-loud stage, here's the idea. The massive lode of Centralia's coal will be burning off for another 250 years. That's a lot of heat. I'm not necessarily thinking of a geothermal application, or of somehow harnessing the carbon monoxide produced by the fire. This project would revolve more around harnessing the heat created by the coal to produce steam to then produce power.

Siphoning water from underground may or may not be a problem, depending on whether the water table is used by any nearby residents, but I would imagine one could always collect the steam for reuse. The hardest part here would be building a mobile steam turbine generator, one that could handle rough and unstable terrain (hence potential interplanetary applications... random morning bus musing). Some sort of decommissioned tank...?

At first, I thought this idea just sounded sort of like when, at age ten, I spent a summer researching submarines at the library (with a card catalog, no less!) and designing plans for a perfect, fully-functional submersible vehicle out of the propane tank which heated our house (not taking into account, of course, that the propane tank was designed against interior pressure, rather than pressure from external forces). But writing this down for the first time, I'm realizing this endeavor actually has some merit to it. And, really, it's quite steampunk. Hm, I suppose I'll have to invest in some welding goggles. And date some chick with a Tank Girl vibe.

This thesis is sounding better all the time.

More to come.

Gunkanjima

32° 37′ 40″ N 129° 44′ 19″ E

I've found about five different names for this place, but Google Earth (which has been known for some slight inaccuracies in naming locations) tags it as Hashima Island. The inhabitance of the island centered around coal mining, beginning just before the turn of the 20th century, and in Japanese style was immediately crammed full of people, at one time boasting one of the highest population densities in the world.

To me, this translates as Lots Of Exploring.

Unfortunately, the island is "closed" - whatever that means. Such forbidden entry doesn't stop Action Squad, or my cronies back in Michigan who used to explore the Michigan Central Depot (before it was sealed off with warnings signed "Dept. of Homeland Security" - even I'm afraid of that) and the steam tunnels below Oakland University. The language barrier would pose an issue with finding a way onto the island, but surely there's some tourista spot where one could rent a boat...

There are a few phenomenal photographic collections taken during the later life of the town:

- Gunkanjima - Views of an Abandoned Island
- Tsuki no Michi - Borderland
- 1974 Gunkanjima
- Shijima

Gunkanjima is how I was first introduced to the Ghost Towns in Asia Wikipedia category, which seems a bit light. Perhaps I'll one day break down and (much to the chagrin of my Lit major friends) get an account and beef this section up a bit. Stranger things have happened.

Ani

40° 30' 27" N, 43° 34' 21"

Once home to upwards of 200,000 inhabitants, this medieval city-state now sits empty and slowly crumbling on the Turkish-Armenian border. I found out about this fantastic location just a few days ago while researching Gunkanjima [post soon to come], and came across a shamefully neglected Wikipedia category: Ghost Towns in Asia.

A wonderful website on the Ani ruins can be found here, featuring a map with lengthy descriptions on each individual site, complete with pictures. Of particular interest are the comparison images, showing the buildings as they appeared when (presumably) they were first photographed (around the turn of the century), and the amount of damage that has occurred (both by natural phenomena and intentional acts).

Sidebar:

Cultural cleansing of Ani, centuries-old Bhutanese Buddhist manuscripts being slowly eaten by worms, Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley... as has always happened, Alexandria et al, we are losing the history of our species by casual indifference and acts of hate.

It's nothing new, and I don't mean to be up on a soapbox. I'm not so idealistic as to believe we can restore these places, or even preserve most. It's our own fear of being forgotten which drives us - well, some of us - to try to preserve the memory of who we have no memory of. But, eventually, the Sahara will consume Timbuktu, and the mud wall madrasas will be gone forever.

My current employment finds me working with software that could, while not preserve such relics in original form, certainly preserve them electronically. Photosynth could save architectural wonders from ruin; Seadragon could preserve crumbling manuscripts, and, given the sudden new durability of ancient documents in a digital medium, would open their viewing up to the entire world.

Will this happen? I don't know. We have a responsibility to restore places and things of the people who came before us; it is a record of who we are. The UNESCO World Heritage Centre makes their attempts, but just as with my ideas as to how the aforementioned Photosynth and Seadragon ought to be applied, where there's no money to be made, there's no interest to be had.