12/11/2022 0 Comments Treasury of art nouveau designA visit provides an intriguing trip to the Madrid of a hundred years ago when people were reluctant to go underground to travel, and the rounded shapes and bright, strong colours were intended to reassure them. Restored to its original condition, its furnishings, ceramic tiling and art-nouveau advertisements are redolent of the 1920s. The city’s first underground line, opened in 1919, could not be extended for modern trains and closed in 1966. Read on for 10 of the best rail relics to visit around Europe, each with its own special atmosphere. The sensations and feelings aroused by such discoveries only enrich our travel. In a strange way we can enjoy decay – and what writer Rose Macaulay calls “ruin pleasure” – as it mingles with nostalgia and offers an insight into the recent past. That station house you see today in some small town, with its musty ticket hall, fractured plasterwork, half-illegible signs, and the inevitable graffiti, with rosebay and buddleia blooming in the track-bed, may next year be smartened up, repainted, revived as a café or a community centre: once again serving a purpose. But it is the buildings that are of most interest, because we can relish the details that remain – a long-stopped clock, the fretwork of a platform verandah, a waterless water column, and hints of former traffic, such as an empty goods van on a rusty siding.īut things do change. Collectors of lost railways and stations develop a keen eye for surviving features: bridge abutments whose arches have been demolished rail-less embankments that cut across the contours of the landscape. While many have completely disappeared, some have been converted to other uses, and others stand derelict.Īt these ghost stations in city centres and in grassy tracks surrounded by fields we can imagine the former scenes of hissing steam, urgent whistles, slamming of doors, and the excitement of arrivals and departures. Transport for London’s new tour acts as a reminder that across Britain and Europe, there are thousands of disused and abandoned railway stations and depots. For the first time in almost a century, visitors will next month be able to descend into the bowels of the original Shepherd’s Bush underground subways in London, which have been out of use since they were used as air-raid shelters in the Second World War.
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