There’s something about old, abandoned vehicles that many of us just can’t tear our eyes away from. Whether it’s a derelict car left forgotten in a forest, or a monstrous old machine abandoned in a meadow, you desperately want to know how they ended up there! Let's take a tour of some derelict trains, planes and mad machines that’ll blow your mind.
The Red Star Graveyard
On the northern fringe of the city of Budapest lies the final rusting place of more than 100 different locomotives. Ranging from rare train engines to rotting train cars, this depot, also known as the Red Star Graveyard, is a derelict heaven for train fanatics.
Istvantelek Train Yard, Budapest URBAN EXPLORATION by Dan Rooney The depot was built in the beginning of the 20th century as a repair yard but today most of it is abandoned, along with the trains inside. Some are astonishingly ancient, like this MAV 301 series engine that was last used more than 100 years ago.
But others, like these MAV 424 steam engines, bear a red star on their fronts from Hungary’s time in the Soviet regime back in the mid 1900’s.
It’s unknown exactly how many ancient trains lie rotting on these tracks, although it’s clear that over the decades, they’ve slowly begun to lose their battle against nature. In a few more years, these amazing trains will likely be overrun by plant life, making this the end of their line!
Abandoned Sögel Tanks
From above, the quaint German town of Sögel doesn’t look like anything out of the ordinary. But when you take a closer look at one of the fields on its outskirts, you can see something seriously strange.
What do you think those 24, perfectly aligned little dots are? Hay bales? Tractors? Maybe some mutant strain of corn? Well, when you zoom in even further, you can just about make out that they are, in fact,
tanks! Leopard 1 and M 47 Patton tanks, to be exact.
Panzerfriedhof Sögel FPV Panzer Verlassene Panzerwracks Free Tanks Abandoned Tank Wrecks M47 Leopard by Diedrich Saathoff Curious urban explorers have visited the site, noticing there’s a sign nearby that says entry to this field is forbidden, but when did that ever stop
urban explorers! As weird as they look planted out in rows like that, these long abandoned, almost 50-ton tanks aren’t just for show. The rigid configuration appears to be some kind of military shooting range. You can tell by the swirling sets of tracks on the ground that this place is probably used by other tanks for driving and target practice! However, any information about this shooting range is kept top secret; well, as top secret as 24 tanks sitting in an open field can be!
Chatillon Car Cemetery
Belgium is famous for its fine chocolate and beer, but until 10 years ago, it was also home to one of the most notorious and intriguing scrap yards in the world. Like a long-forgotten traffic jam, the lines of old cars stretching out into the forest of the Châtillon Car Cemetery was an astonishing sight to behold.
car graveyard Chatillon by Piet Farlakes
Many of these were rusted American motors, which spurred a rumor that they’d been left behind by American forces after the Second World War ended. But most of these cars had been made 20 years or so after the war was over, so what was the real story behind their abandonment? It was eventually revealed that the cars actually belonged to Canadian Air Force troops. Hundreds of them had been stationed in the nearby town of Virton on behalf of the NATO alliance back in the late 1940’s. But because the town was so small, the business of repairing the troops' many cars fell on one lone mechanic in nearby Châtillon. However, when France withdrew from NATO in 1966, the troops left, leaving the mechanic with hundreds of cars in a relatively tiny town. Unable to sell them on, they lay rusting and rotting over the years, until they were all sadly cleared away in 2010.
Solheimasandur: Iceland Plane Wreck
The volcanic, basalt black sands of Iceland make up some of the most breath-taking beaches on the planet. But while these sands are astonishing by themselves, they’re also home to one of the most out of place abandoned vehicles in the world.
Meet the
Sólheimasandur Plane Wreck, a twin-engine fuselage of an old Cargo plane hollowed out and stripped bare by decades of punishing arctic winds. Though it looks like a post-apocalyptic grave, it’s actually all that remains of the terrifying events from November 21st, 1973.
Sólheimasandur Plane Crash by Skynet 360
On that day, the five-man crew of the C-117 plane were making their way to a US naval station in Iceland, when temperatures suddenly plunged to a frosty 14° Fahrenheit. 60 mph arctic gusts pummeled them, and ice terrifyingly froze up both the plane’s engines! The plane dropped out of the sky and crash landed on the beach, but miraculously, every man on board survived without so much as a scratch! The US military eventually rescued them and began stripping the grounded plane of everything it had. They clipped its wings, removed its engines, and took anything that was salvageable, leaving the 5-ton shell littered on the beach! That’s pretty rude, although it has left Iceland with a free tourist attraction.
Kiska Submarine Wreck
The remote island of Kiska, which is part of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, is a 22-mile-long landmass that isn’t populated by a single soul. Without any roads or buildings on its barren shores, it’s the last place you’d expect to find any abandoned vehicles.
So, you might be shocked to discover that its shorelines are littered with old anti-aircraft guns, rusting ships, and even submarines! Even though many of them are more than 80 years old, Alaska’s cold climate has kept most of them incredibly well preserved! Especially these Japanese Type A midget submarines. At just 78 ft long and less than 6 ft wide, these sneaky submarines were used to infiltrate enemy waters. But if they were caught, they were small enough that the Japanese could claim they were just ‘target practice’! However, they were also armed with torpedoes, and some were even used in the famous attack of Pearl Harbor!
So, what are their rusting remains doing way out in Kiska? It turns out they’re from a little-known battle that occurred in Alaska during World War 2. At the time, Kiska was home to an American-manned weather station which was captured by the Japanese. In response to the occupation, American and Canadian forces waged an air campaign against the island, which was bombarded and blockaded for an entire year. Overpowered and outgunned, in 1943, the Imperial Japanese Navy quickly retreated from the Aleutian Islands. But not before blowing out the hulls of any ships and subs they had to leave behind so that their enemies couldn’t use them!
That battle may not be found in many history books, but that story of supreme pettiness is definitely one for the ages.
Abandoned Turbo Jet Train
The 20th Century Space Race fueled a competition between the United States and Soviet Russia to see who could create the bigger and better rocket ship. But this also led to the creation of another super-fast, jet propelled vehicle: The Turbo Jet Train.
It was created back in the 1960’s by American engineer Don Wetzel, who’d been tasked with creating a faster and cheaper locomotive. Wetzel had the whacky idea of adding jet engines onto trains to propel them along the tracks, and the resulting M-497 boasted two 5,000 horsepower jet engines! These were placed on the front of the train just to make it look cooler, and when it was tested, it was able to reach an astonishing 183 mph!
This incredible locomotive development inspired the Soviets to build their own Jet Trains, and by the 1970’s
this amazing machine was born. The head of an old ER22 engine had been redesigned and modernized, with two turbojet engines from a Yakovlev YAK-40 plonked on the top! But when pushed to its limit, the train only reached about 155 mph. Though it still sounds awesome, right? Well, outshined by its American counterpart, as well as being loud and costly to operate, the prototype was abandoned. It was moved to an unused track behind a rail car factory near Doroshikha where it lay forgotten for more than 40 years! Even though it looks like it’d fall apart with a light touch now, I bet a ride on this train in its heyday would have been off the rails.
Abandoned Soviet Hydrofoil Boats (Raketas)
Now, Turbo Trains weren’t the only crazy inventions that the Soviets brought to the table. In 1957, the Soviet Union began manufacturing utterly incredible hydrofoil boats.
"Raketa" The Soviet Hydrofoil Boat by Deividas V
They could travel much faster than regular boats because they were lifted out of the water on a set of submerged wings. This reduced the boats drag massively, and let it skim over the water like a stone! These Russian river rockets, called Raketa, carried passengers along riverways at a top speed of 43 mph, more than three times the speed of similarly sized boats at the time! They were a huge success, but following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many couldn’t be maintained and were sent to rust in ship graveyards.
Most of the river rockets in these photos are called Meteors, which is a second-generation design that was faster than the Raketa and could carry up to 160 passengers! But today, many of them are rusting away in a forest near the Kama Reservoir, close to the city of Perm. Somehow, even in this dilapidated state, they still look as majestic as they did in their heyday!
Abandoned Ekranoplan
When it comes to abandoned vehicles, the jewel in the Soviet’s crazy crown has to go to the little-known Lun-class Ekranoplan.
Lun-class Ekranoplan Launching a P-270 Moskit by Hazegrayart
This top-secret military vehicle was a 242ft long beast that relied on the lesser known ‘wing-in-ground’ effect to get around. As an aircraft flies closer to the ground, air pressure builds between the wing and the surface below, creating a cushion of air beneath the plane. So, with a set of specially designed wings, the Ekranoplan could skate just inches over any ocean or lake, and under the radar horizon of enemy warships. With the aid of those 8 forward mounted turbo jets, this brilliant behemoth could reach a top speed of 340 mph, so it combined the capacity of a boat with the speed of a plane! Unfortunately, just one Ekranoplan prototype, nicknamed the Caspian Sea Monster, was completed when the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991. The Lun program was discontinued, and the Caspian Sea Monster was left sitting idly on a tightly guarded dock on the coast of Russia’s Daghestan region. For almost 30 years the beast was left to sleep, until its slumber was disturbed in July 2020. It was finally being towed to a new museum home, but after making its way almost 100 km over the Caspian Sea, it ran aground on the sandy shores of Derbent. At a mind-blowing 264 tons, the monster was too heavy to be pulled ashore, and so it remained abandoned on the beach for another 5 months!
Mil Mi-6 Wreckage
So, this next Soviet-era vehicle may not be as strange as the Jet Trains, the River rockets, or the enormous Ekranoplan, but the way it’s been abandoned is truly bizarre.
Out in the marshes of Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets district, almost 1,500 miles from the capital of Moscow, there’s something steely lurking in the swamps. Though it looks like a beast, it’s actually the wreckage of an old Mil Mi-6 helicopter!
Ми 6 CCCP 21899 by Вертолёт Ми When they were first produced back in the 1950’s, these 108 ft long behemoths weighed a staggering 30 tons and were easily the largest helicopters the world had ever seen. But in 1981, the crew of this Mi-6 were flying at an altitude of just under 500 ft when, all of a sudden, both the chopper’s engines gave out! The five-man crew crashed into the swamp below, but, by some miracle, none of them were injured! The Mi-6, on the other hand, suffered some serious damage. An investigation later found that refueling workers had accidentally filled the chopper’s tank up with a gasoline-water mix, causing its engines to fail.
But no plans were ever made to retrieve the vehicle! Instead, it’s sat abandoned in the swamp for more than 40 years, during which time its engines and even its tail section have been stolen! That’s enough to send any aircraft enthusiast into a tailspin.
Abandoned Soviet MAZ Truck
Did you think the list of derelict Soviet vehicles stopped there? Well, just feast your eyes on this abandoned MAZ-7904.
With all those wheels and that split cabin, it looks like some sort of giant, mechanized caterpillar! These old Soviet MAZ trucks and tractors were designed during the height of the Cold War to carry all manner of increasingly massive nuclear missiles. So much so, the MAZ-7904 was a six-axel, 12-wheeled beast designed to carry loads of up to an eye-watering 220 tons! But the chassis alone weighed around 140 tons, meaning its huge, 9 ft diameter wheels had to support a staggering 30 tons each! The weighty design was such a critical issue for this vehicle’s development, that no less than 100 specialists were brought in to ensure it would work.
Despite its weight issue, it was rolled out in 1983 measuring over 100 ft long and 22 ft wide! The specialists had fitted it with a turbocharged 42.2 liter engine, so it could produce a hefty 1500 horsepower! But dragging all that weight meant it had a maximum speed of just 16 mph. On top of that, the prototype handled incredibly poorly, which is the last thing you want to hear about a vehicle carrying world-ending nukes!
Despite all the effort that went into making it, it never carried a nuke, and the prototype was left to rust in a hanger in Kazakhstan. By 2007, its tires were unrecognizably deflated, parts of it had been stolen or salvaged, and all it was good for was a handful of photoshoots. Its remnants were eventually scrapped in 2010, much to the disappointment of all the other cool kids who wanted photographs posing next to it!
The McBarge
Even though it doesn’t boast a set of big golden arches, you probably guessed from the name that The McBarge once belonged to the McDonalds Corporation! It was built back in 1986 for Vancouver’s World Fair, which was held on the shores of False Creek.
So, McDonalds took this opportunity to show off a new floating design for their future restaurants! They constructed a brand-new, one-of-a-kind restaurant on a 187-ft-long barge for a whopping $12 million, that’s around $26 million today! They cornily named it The Friendship 500, a pun that’s so bad it makes my jokes look good! The 8,500 sq. ft restaurant was designed to float to waterfront locations, bringing Big Macs to shores all over the world! It was pretty popular at the 6-month World Expo, where it was jokingly nicknamed The McBarge. But just 5 years later, residents were over the novelty, and the shorefront owners ordered the McBarge to go.
It was floated over to the less-populated Burrard Inlet in 1991, but instead of bringing in business, it was just left to rot! For more than 30 years, the McBarge has slowly decayed on the coast, gathering dust as well as graffiti. The inside still boasts that classic 80’s décor, although most of the interior has been ravaged by decay and vandalism. The windows are covered in grime and spray paint, the floors and walls are filthy, and at one point there were even boxes of old products left on board! It may have been popular in the 80’s, but it’s the last place you’d want to eat in now!
Herkimer Battle Jitney
Scrap yards are filled to the brim with all kinds of abandoned vehicles, but some, like the brilliantly bizarre example below, really stand out from the rest.
Discovered in a surplus yard out in America, the triple axled, 6-wheel vehicle is unlike any other van, truck, or car you’ve ever seen! It’s truly one of a kind! So, what’s it doing in a scrapheap? Well, it turns out this isn’t someone’s abandoned passion project, it’s actually got a little fame behind it.
Many of you will be too young to remember ‘The Mystery Men’, a classic 90’s film about a group of inept superheroes tasked with saving a city from destruction. In it, the good guys hilariously acquire a beast of a vehicle named the Herkimer Battle Jitney.
Herkimer Battle Jitney: reference footage from the movie Mystery Men by Caleb Kraft It looked so well put together in the film that it had many movie fans wondering if it was a real vehicle. Some even claimed it was a heavy troop vehicle called the Z17 Marauder, which had been contracted by the US government. In reality though, the Jitney was just a custom-built vehicle made specifically for the film. Its running gear was a 1979 ford semi-truck with the cab removed, and the body was a modified Airstream camper. But its heavily customized appearance meant it couldn’t be re-used in any other films, and so, sadly, it was left to gather dust. Maybe it’ll get an ending fit for a superhero in the future.
Handley Page Victor
Until 2020, an imposing looking aircraft guarded the gates of Marham’s Royal Air Force base in England. It was a Handley Page Victor: a British, jet-powered, strategic bomber that was designed back in the 1950’s during the Cold War.
At just over 140 ft in length, and with a wingspan of 110 ft, these amazing aircraft could carry up to 17 ½ tons of bombs! Or one 5-ton free-fall gravity bomb, which is a nice way of saying ‘one very big nuke’.
They certainly made an impact when they took to the skies, but when the war ended in 1991, there wasn’t much use for them. The last of these models was retired in 1993, but the cost to restore and maintain them was so great that the RAF was giving them away to the public for free! Sadly, very few people had the space and resources to accommodate such massive planes, and while some models found homes in museums, others like this one were relegated to RAF Marham’s fire pit.
As you can see, the windscreens have all but been blown out, the inside has been blackened by fire, and the rest of it has been completely gutted. Here, the once proud bomber was used for drills, firefighting and target practice by the RAF, until it was scrapped back in 1995. Seeing that vintage bomber burned out like that is a bummer!
Abandoned Lamborghini Huracan
With great horsepower comes great responsibility, something that the owner of this Lamborghini Huracan forgot, along with his car, back in 2019!
Cameraman Andrew Lawrence was travelling through North London, England, early one morning when he suddenly spotted this $250,000 purple supercar lying in a road-side gully. The Lambo was facing the wrong way and was in a ditch on the wrong side of the road, with the driver’s side door jammed against the ground. But when Andrew looked around, the owner was nowhere in sight! How tempted do you think he was to call in a tow truck and claim it was his? Being a better man than most, Andrew called the police and tried to locate the car’s owner. It turned out that
it belonged to Bitstocks founder and Bitcoin millionaire, Michael Hudson. He’d been driving down the road when the car hit a puddle of water and aquaplaned off into the ditch. But, instead of calling in a tow truck, he abandoned the Lambo and walked off to get help. Fortunately, the damage to the quarter-million-dollar car was pretty minimal, and he was able to get it back on the road soon enough! With all that money, maybe he should think about investing in some driving lessons?
Abandoned Batmobile
Most will agree that the best Batman films are the ones when actor Michael Keaton took on the role of the caped crusader. Everything about them was timeless: the costume, the gadgets, Michelle-Pfeifer-as-Catwoman, the car. Although, that last one actually hasn’t aged too well.
Back in 2019, the armored shell of a Keaton-era Batmobile was discovered rusting in a scrapyard! It’d clearly been there for some time, but amazingly, it wasn’t the only one to have been abandoned.
In 2020, another Batmobile body was discovered in a scrap yard over in New York! Obviously, there’s only one batman, so where did these two bodies come from? It appears that big Batman fans built these replica bodies from personal DIY kits. But as their obsession with the Dark Knight faded, so did the love of their custom kits, which they decided to scrap. Although, they might live to regret that choice. In 2019, this perfect working replica of the Keaton-mobile was put on eBay.
Listed as having 400 horsepower under the hood and being totally road legal, this thing had a price tag of a wallet-busting $680,000! After seeing that price tag, leaving the parts of one of these in the forest suddenly seems like a real joker move!
The Abandoned Bagger 258 Bucket Wheel Excavator
The gorgeous green meadows of Schipkau, Germany, are home to an abandoned attraction that really stands out. Stretching almost 170 ft into the sky, with a 40 ft diameter chainsaw-looking wheel at one end, this rusty colossus looks like a weapon built to fight King Kong!
Bagger 1473 by Drohnen Rudel Leipzig When urban explorers discovered the vehicle back in 2002, they believed it was a Bagger 258; a massive bucket wheel excavator used as part of a continuous mining system. As the wheel at the front of the machine turned, those huge buckets attached to it would scoop up earth before dropping it onto a conveyor belt to be processed. It was a bit like a factory, although this factory was mounted onto tank-like tracks and could move at a top speed of around 20 ft per minute. However, as more and more explorers came to marvel at this massive, abandoned machine, they realized it actually wasn’t a Bagger 258, but a Bagger 1473! It had been built back in 1965 and was once affectionately called The Blue Wonder thanks to its beautiful blue paint job! Its buckets could each shovel up to a staggering 52 cubic ft of earth. So, in less than 150 full rotations, this thing could scoop up enough soil to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool! Although not anymore. It was abandoned in 2002 because it had run out of things to dig and was too big and costly to transport elsewhere. Today, it’s a protected landmark that makes for an interesting photo. Or, if you’re a super crazy urban explorer, it can make one hell of a rope swing!If you were amazed at these abandoned vehicles, you might want to read about
unusual abandoned technology. Thanks for reading!
