Usine

The advantage of a 4 hours ride to visit an abandoned sawmill is that we increase our chances of finding an intact place without the slightest trace of vandalism. Or at least, very little.

All along the road, the fear of finding a barricaded building has began to gangrene our mind but the surprise was total at our arrival. The visit was possible and all the industrial equipment of this old factory were there.

It takes a lot of motivation to get to this old mine and foundry abandoned since 2002. For it must be admitted that we are rather far from everything in this distant municipality of 650 inhabitants. Moreover, if this village exists, it is above all because of this deposit of copper discovered in 1921 and which led in the 1950s to the commissioning of the factory.

When the mine and the smelter roll at full capacity in the 1970s, there were more than 5,000 people in the city who depended almost exclusively on mining activities.

Located in the region of Baranja in Croatia, Šećerana is a settlement of 559 inhabitants near Beli Manastir. Today forgotten and half destroyed, the old Baranja Sugar factory has been built in 1898 and became a state company in 1906. Funded with the Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia’ money, he also accepted a rate of 1,5%. Known as the greatest flourishing in the seventies and the eighties, there were more than hundred workers at its golden age.

Located a few kilometers from the municipality of Calzadilla de los Barros and its 850 inhabitants, the abandoned aerodrome dates from before the Spanish Civil War which took place from 1936 to 1939 with the victory of General Franco.

It was also bombed on 5 August 1936 by the national army of Franco, about three weeks after the beginning of hostilities.

After the war, the place was occupied by farmers until the end of the 1960s. Only the buildings remained intact, the rest having given way to vines.

It can not be said that the place is in a good shape. The water infiltrates through every small hole in the roof to the point of offering on this cold winter night a skating rink on each floor. Moreover, the ice must make more than eight centimeters thick.

On the first floor, the walls bear the traces of a fire that seems to have broken out in the old part of the factory. Outside light permeates through the holes in the sheet metal and rare graffiti adorn its walls. With a value of more than $ 8 million, it is guessed that the inspector's last visit dates back several years.

The Coal mine of Hasard de Cheratte is the main colliery of Société anonyme des Charbonnages du Hasard, composed of four mine shafts. It is located in Cheratte, a section of the Belgian town of Visé located in the Walloon Region in the province of Liège.

The first well was dug in 1850 to extract dice coal and closed for the first time in 1877 following an accident. It re-opened thirty years later in 1907 and operated until 1977. In the early twenty-first century, the mine has gained some notoriety as an urban ruin.

A true emblem of the Old Port of Montreal, it is difficult to miss the Silo # 5, a gigantic concrete structure south of McGill Street. The complex consists of 206 silos and an amalgam of buildings built over a period of more than fifty years, measuring half a kilometer and 66 meters (218 feet) high.

For the region, it is a vestige of an industrial era that is now over. Whereas in the past, the factory gave a salary to nearly a hundred employees, the complex is now padlocked and deserted, although monitored by about twenty surveillance cameras. The adventurers are also denounced and prosecuted. Here, the owner does not laugh with those who venture on his property. The vandals who came last spring also have their portrait prominently on the exterior walls.

Heavily damaged by the time, the old copper mine is closed for several years. While its lower floors are completely flooded with muddy and stagnant water, the ground floor was, meanwhile, weakened by a sedimentary rock ceiling that collapsed in some places.

We are talking about over 5000 years of mining history in this area. The landscape has been changed forever, and it looks at some places like a alien planet where red, yellow, purple mingle with green, gray and ocher.

The ten abandoned trains account that the site today are only a small part of this industrial landscape that has been suddenly stopped in 1974. At its peak, there was more than 150 trains who were traversing the long and winding road which stretched over 84 km. Each train had between 20 and 50 cars full of pyrite.