The Most Remarkable Abandoned Railways in the World
5 places in 4 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable abandoned railways in the world are Kinzua Bridge (United States), Usui Daisan Bridge (Megane Bridge) (Japan) and Uyuni Train Cemetery (Bolivia). The list covers 5 abandoned railways in 4 countries. Japan has the most, with 2. Last updated 13 October 2026.
An abandoned railway leaves behind its strongest pieces: the bridges, viaducts and locomotives that were built to carry weight and outlasted the traffic. Without trains, their engineering becomes easier to see — the rhythm of brick arches, the lattice of a steel trestle, the line of a concrete span across water. Time adds its own layer, as reservoirs rise and fall around them, storms break them, and rust turns iron to the colour of the desert.
The Taushubetsu River Bridge in Hokkaido is a concrete arch bridge standing in a reservoir that covers and uncovers it as the water level changes. The Usui Daisan Bridge, known as the Megane Bridge, is a brick viaduct of four arches on the old line over the Usui Pass. The Kinzua Bridge in Pennsylvania was a tall steel viaduct until a tornado brought down much of it in 2003; its surviving towers now end in mid-air. In Taiwan, the brick arches of the Longteng Broken Bridge stand where an earthquake left them in 1935, and near Uyuni in Bolivia, old steam locomotives rust on the edge of the salt flat.
Railways in this section are selected by how they look and ordered by beauty. Each has its own text, a photograph with the author named and a place on the map, and the section is also divided into pages by country.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kinzua Bridge | Abandoned railway | United States | |
| 2 | Usui Daisan Bridge (Megane Bridge) | Abandoned railway | Japan | |
| 3 | Uyuni Train Cemetery | Abandoned railway | Bolivia | |
| 4 | Longteng Broken Bridge | Abandoned railway | Taiwan | |
| 5 | Taushubetsu River Bridge | Abandoned railway | Japan |
01 Kinzua Bridge
United States41.763° N 78.588° W
Image by nicolasbulgarides from Pixabay A line of steel towers marches out across the wooded Kinzua Creek valley in northern Pennsylvania and then stops in mid-air; below it, the rest of the structure lies twisted on the valley floor where a tornado threw it in 2003. The Kinzua Bridge was once the tallest railway viaduct in the world, and its broken remains have become one of the most striking engineering ruins in North America.
Did you know? The 1882 bridge went up without scaffolding: a crane built on top of each finished tower was used to raise the next one, all the way across 20 towers.
02 Usui Daisan Bridge (Megane Bridge)
Japan · 33.8 km from Maebashi36.358° N 138.698° E
Charlie fong · CC BY-SA 4.0 Where the old Shin'etsu line climbed the Usui Pass between Gunma and Nagano, the railway engineers of the Meiji era had to lift trains up a steep mountain grade. Their answer was a rack railway on the Abt system, and to carry it across the gorges they built a series of brick viaducts. The largest of them, the Usui Third Bridge, is the one everyone knows by its nickname, Megane-bashi — the "spectacles bridge" — for the round arches that open through it like lenses.
Did you know? Within a year of completion the bridge showed signs of deformation, so its piers and arches had to be heavily reinforced in 1894.
03 Uyuni Train Cemetery
Cementerio de los Trenes
Bolivia · 2.4 km from Uyuni20.481° S 66.837° W
Image by jerzykwpodrozy from Pixabay On the flat, dusty edge of the Bolivian altiplano, just outside the town of Uyuni, rows of dead locomotives stand in the open as if a railway had been abandoned mid-shift. This is the Cementerio de Trenes, the train graveyard: around a hundred steam engines and wagons, the oldest from the late nineteenth century, rusting in the thin, dry air at the rim of the Salar de Uyuni. It is often described as the largest collection of its kind in the world.
Did you know? The railway that made Uyuni began in 1872 as a nitrate line from the Chilean port of Antofagasta, worked at first by mules before steam arrived in 1876.
04 Longteng Broken Bridge
Taiwan · 23.9 km from Miaoli City24.358° N 120.774° E
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain The Longteng Bridge is among the best-loved railway ruins in Taiwan: a row of red-brick piers standing in a green valley in Sanyi Township, Miaoli County, the arches that once linked them long gone. It was built in 1906 under Japanese rule to carry the railway across the valley, and completed on 30 January 1907. The design combined a central steel truss with approaches on multiple brick masonry arches, so that the valley was crossed by a long procession of arches with iron at its centre.
Did you know? The bridge was originally named after the stream it crossed, the Yutengping, and is still often called the Yutengping Broken Bridge.
05 Taushubetsu River Bridge
Japan43.416° N 143.189° E
Chatama · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Taushubetsu River Bridge is a string of concrete arches standing in the middle of Lake Nukabira in the mountains of Hokkaido's Tokachi region, and it is famous precisely because it does not always exist. Eleven arches, about 130 m in all, rise from the lakebed and, on still days, meet their reflections to form a row of perfect circles, which is why people call it the "spectacles bridge". Because the lake is a hydroelectric reservoir, its level rises and falls through the year: the bridge usually emerges in winter, standing on the frozen lake by around January, shows itself fully in spring, and by late summer or autumn slips under the water again. Local people call it the phantom bridge.
Did you know? Trains crossed the bridge for only about sixteen years, from its opening in November 1939 until the line was diverted in August 1955.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What happened to the Kinzua Bridge?
- The Kinzua Viaduct in Pennsylvania was struck by a tornado in 2003, which toppled a large part of its steel towers. The remaining section was later turned into a walkway ending above the fallen structure.
- Why is the Taushubetsu River Bridge called a phantom bridge?
- It stands in Lake Nukabira, a dam reservoir in Hokkaido. As the water rises and falls, the concrete arches are submerged and reappear, so the bridge seems to come and go.
- Which country has the most abandoned railways?
- In our collection, the most come from Japan (2), Bolivia (1) and Taiwan (1).
- What is the Uyuni Train Cemetery?
- It is a collection of disused steam locomotives and rail cars left on the outskirts of Uyuni, Bolivia, from the era when the town was a railway junction for the mining industry.
- How many abandoned railways are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 5 abandoned railways in 4 countries. Japan has the most, with 2.