The old Minas de Riotinto locomotives
The old Minas de Riotinto locomotives

The old Minas de Riotinto locomotives

The old Minas de Riotinto locomotives

Martian landscape in the heart of Spain

Minas de Riotinto, Spain

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.

The mine located in the town of Minas de Riotinto, as we know it today, began operating in 1875 and stopped almost 100 years later. Today, if the plant is closed, a museum exists on the site.

Related content

The abandoned Laurentian military base
Saint-Adolphe d'Howard, Quebec (Canada)

Closed in 1987, the former Canadian military base located in St-Adolphe-d'Howard began its operations in 1950. Its mission: monitor the airspace in southwestern Quebec and northeastern Ontario. True vestige of the Cold War between the Western...

The Coal mine of Hasard de Cheratte
Cheratte, (Belgium)

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...

The old and abandoned gas station
Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec (Canada)

It was a garage, but also a gas station, a car wash and a house. But today, the large building is completely abandoned. Newspapers and magazines on the floor suggest that the owners left about two years ago. They have left suddenly, by the way....

Geo W. Reed plant - Photo by Pierre Bourgault
Montréal, Quebec (Canada)

No doubt, this is a mysterious building. There is no reliable information about this abandoned building on the Internet. Impossible to corroborate the details found here and there. Indeed, even the name of the building can’t be confirmed. While...