Uyuni Train Cemetery

stefbearwitness has added a photo to the pool:

The front end of a locomotive abandoned in the desert at the Uyuni Train Cemetery on April 23, 2012 in Uyuni, Bolivia.

Sitting at 3,670 metres above sea level on the edge of the world's largest salt flat the Salar de Uyuni, is the final resting place for a group of locomotives that were once upon a time, the cutting edge of Victorian engineering.

In the days of yore when Great Britain was actually great at doing things other than producing feral teenagers, their engineers were tasked with helping build railway networks all over South America. Towards the end of the 19th century the Bolivian Government sought out British expertise investing in a good transport network that would be key to their economic success.

On a side note, it was these temporary British communities dotted all over South America that introduced Football to the people of this continent and not the Spanish or Italians as one might assume. Or so the myth goes. Shame Brazil had to get so damn good at it.

A sizeable British community was established in Uyuni and construction began in1888. Uyuni was intended to serve as the main distribution hub for trains carrying minerals en route to Pacific Ocean ports.

However, because of defeat at the hands of Chile a few years earlier whereby Chile acquired Bolivian territory, Bolivia no longer had a coastline leaving it landlocked. These disputes, coupled with a depletion of minerals and British mining companies meddling behind the scenes meant that construction was eventually abandoned.

Their use limped on until the eventual collapse of the mining industry in the 1940s. These metal carcases are what remains after they were driven 3 Kilometres outside of town and dumped in the desert, left to slowly rot away.

(c)Stefan Jeremiah/BearWitnessPictures

(No photograph or digital file may be reproduced, cropped or modified digitally or otherwise without prior consent, and the spirit of the caption must be respected.)