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High in the Andes, in southwest Bolivia is located Uyuni, a town with approximately 60,000 visitors from around the globe every year, probably there for the famous Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat.

The Salar was formed as a result of transformations between several prehistoric lakes. It is covered by a few meters of salt crust, which has an extraordinary flatness with the average elevation variations within one meter over the entire area of the Salar.

It was the shooting location for a major battle scene in Disney’s blockbuster 2017 movie Star Wars: The Last Jedi, representing the planet Crait.

Also is used for calibrating the altimeters of Earth observation satellites.

But some 3 km outside the city is located another tourist attraction – the ‘Cementerio de trenes’, the antique train “cemetery”, dozens of abandoned steam trains scattered around, beautiful relics of an industry left behind.

From the end of the 19th century till this day, Uyuni has been an important transportation hub for trains connecting key cities in the region.

Construction on the network was started in 1888. It was encouraged by the then Bolivian President Aniceto Arce, who believed Bolivia would flourish with a good transport system, but it was also constantly sabotaged by the local Aymara indigenous Indians who saw it as an intrusion into their lives.

The rail lines were built by British engineers who were invited by the British-sponsored Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway Companies.

The trains were mostly used by the mining companies carrying minerals from the Andes mountains to the Pacific Ocean ports.

Partly due to the mineral depletion, in the 1940s, the mining industry collapsed.

The train cars and locomotives, many of them dating back to the early 20th century were abandoned outside Uyuni, forming this mass train “cemetery”.

Buffeted by salt winds for decades, rusted out, stripped of useful parts and covered in graffiti they create beautiful museum under the open sky and reminder of some better days.

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flickr.com/Marc-Wisniak

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