Train Cemetery

On the windswept fringes of the southwestern Altiplano, the rusted wreckage of Bolivia’s industrial ambitions lies stranded three kilometers outside Uyuni. In the late 1880s, President Aniceto Arce championed this rail network to haul silver and tin from inland mines like Huanchaca to the Pacific port of Antofagasta, relying heavily on British engineering and imported machinery. However, following the collapse of the mineral market in the 1940s and continuous sabotage by local indigenous communities who saw the railway as an intrusion, the railway company abandoned dozens of steam locomotives to the elements, inaugurating this desert boneyard. Today, visitors step into a surreal open-air graveyard of hollowed-out steam engines, oxidized tankers, and derailed freight wagons. Dozens of skeletal British-made trains—including Garratt and Mikado-type locomotives—stand corroded in hues of burnt orange, ochre, and flaking iron, their steel bellies encrusted with windblown salt from the nearby salar. Travelers encounter an eerie playground where the freezing Andean wind moans through perforated boilers and stripped fireboxes. Walking among the twisted tracks, you can scale the pitted iron rungs, duck into cavernous, graffiti-etched boiler tubes, and photograph the stark silhouettes of industrial decay against the stark, high-altitude horizon.