Estacion Canfranc, Aragon, Spain, 2001.The immense, now mostly abandoned, train station at Canfranc

Estacion Canfranc, Aragon, Spain, 2001.The immense, now mostly abandoned, train station at Canfranc was built to serve traffic crossing the Pyrenees through a tunnel under the venerable Somport Pass. The station was built as a border crossing point from Spain into France and vv, and a transfer from the standard rail gauge used in France to the wide gauge of the Iberian Peninsula. The tunnel was finished and inaugurated with great pomp in 1928, but the line was never very successful, and the tunnel was abandoned after an accident in 1970.In the last years of the 20th century there had been some activity toward reopening the tunnel for rail service, but completion of a highway tunnel rendered that moot. The rail tunnel is now partly used for an underground laboratory.As recently as 2001, when I took this photo, there were a few trains a week to Canfranc, though I understand the link from Jaca is now served by bus.In the late middle ages, Somport was the major crossing of the Pyrenees for pilgrims from much of central Europe and from Italy on their way to Santiago de Compostela. Today the Camino Aragones begins at Somport en-route to Puente la Reina in Navarra where it joins the Camino Frances for the 750 or so remaining kilometers to the shrine of the apostle St. James the Major.http://www.forbidden-places.net/urban-exploration-canfranc-railway-station#.Ubns9Ovk_vM -- source link

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