The front facade of the Mundo a Vapor train museum in Canela, Brazil recreates a spectacular Parisian train wreck from 1895 in steamingly accurate detail.

No doubt the worst – or at least, the most embarrassing – day in the history of the Chemins de fer de l’Ouest railway was October 22 of 1895, the date of the Montparnasse Derailment. Captured for posterity through the miracle of photography, this epic urban train wreck saw the twelve-car Granville to Paris and Montparnasse Express train enter the Gare Montparnasse station at too high a speed, suffer a brake failure, smash through safety buffers, careen 100 feet across the station concourse, and finally burst through the building’s outer wall, falling 30 feet into the street below. Ta da!

Steam locomotive No. 721 was hauling 10 coaches and 131 passengers at the time. The only fatality of the spectacular crash, however, was a woman in the street who was struck by displaced masonry while waiting for her husband. Though CF de l’Ouest was absorbed into the French national rail system in 1909, their day of infamy lives on, day after day, thousands of miles away in Brazil. Flickr member RV1864 has posted several photographs of the accident and the subsequent cleanup, two of which are presented above.

Troll Steam Ahead

Fast-forward 96 years and fast- er, sideways 5,837 miles to Canela, a charming town of 40,000 set jewel-like in the Gaucho Highlands of Rio Grande do Sul. Canela (Portuguese for “cinnamon”) is a popular tourist destination boasting several noteworthy attractions including Mundo a Vapor… the “World of Steam” train museum and theme park, which opened in 1991.

Exterior Loco Motive

It’s hard to miss Mundo a Vapor, just like it was hard to miss a major train station in Paris… we’re looking at you, engine driver Guillaume-Marie Pellerin. Unlike the old (demolished in 1969) Gare Montparnasse train terminal, over-achieving locomotive No. 721 is a feature, not a bug… and yes, the replica engine proudly displays its ID ‘cuz if one’s gonna troll, might as well troll to the max. These images from Flickr members Rosanetur and Solon Aguiar (solonneto) date from November of 2017 and September of 2012, respectively.

Steam Dream Team

Mundo a Vapor isn’t your average train museum and calling it a “theme park” is a bit of a stretch – the only real “ride” is a small steam train that, perhaps fortunately, does NOT crash through the second-story wall. What’s up with that? Here comes the history! Back in the 1920s, Ernesto Urbani ran a small business servicing and repairing the steam engines used at many of the local sawmills. Urbani’s sons Omar, Benito and Hermes spent their childhoods in the shop, learning all about steam engines and crafting miniature versions in their spare time. The boys – now retired gents – opened Mundo a Vapor in 1991 as both a tribute to their father and an homage to their love of all things steam.

Iron Horseplay

As such, Mundo a Vapor isn’t so much a museum of railroads as it is a showcase of the Urbani’s many handmade steam engines and miniature mechanical devices. For example, one steam-driven machine presses pulp into usable paper while another spits out pot-metal souvenirs cast from molten solder. Not exactly thrilling but hey – there’s always the replica crashed locomotive out front for photo opportunities. Be sure to snap the shutter when the stack belches thick white smoke. Flickr members Contato Dearaujo and Cesar Cardoso captured these scenes (and our lead image) in April of 2014 and June of 2011, respectively.

South Polar Express

Canela (along with its sister city Gramado) lies on the so-called “Rota Romantica” and it’s popular with tourists year-round. Successive waves of immigrants from the Azores, Germany and Italy have influenced the town’s architecture, not to mention its overall European character. Snow often falls during the winter, prompting extensive Christmastime events and activities. Someone better tell Santa that reindeer can’t fly but steam locomotives can…  for a few seconds. Flickr member Anderson Rancan snapped some of the holiday disaster fiasco fun in late 2008.

Keepin’ It Rail

Flickr member Jeff Belmonte brings us these night-time images of Mundo a Vapor’s crash-tacular facade taken in early 2006. Flying down to Rio – or a tad farther, to the Sao Paulo region – isn’t an option for many in the Northern Hemisphere but thanks to Mundo a Vapor you can pay a five-minute visit to the museum via this video. In the meantime, and to paraphrase Bogie from Casablanca, “We’ll always have the Paris trainwreck” thanks to those masters of steam (and trolling), the brothers Urbani.

Amidst the modern architecture and undulating spaces of this station in Delft, one design detail stands out above the rest: a huge abstracted version of a map from the late 1800s that connects across a series of aluminum ceiling fins.

As travelers move through the space, their perspective shifts — overlaid on vertical slats, the map becomes abstract or concrete depending on the viewing angle, and periodically reveals details (like the name of the city) to new arrivals.

Developed by Macanoo over the last decade, this hub is more than just a station, containing a new city hall and municipal offices as well, but sited above the main transit tunnel is the grand open space connecting it all — an apt place for a massive map.

Within the station hall walls and columns are adorned with a contemporary reinterpretation of delft’s famed blue tiles. References to the region can be found in the facade and window designs, too.

The halls are separated with a glass wall and two further volumes that house the public counters, consultation rooms and technical services of the municipal offices, and the commercial functions of the station hall.

Driving into Motor City, the beautiful and towering 18-story Michigan Central Station is hard to miss — it is both a Beaux-Arts Classical landmark (standing out even in a city rich with historical architecture) but also a famous abandonment, which became emlematic of the city’s decline, at least until now.

This train station operated on and off from dedication in 1914 to its final closure in 1988, a literal and symbolic victim of Detroit’s own automobile boom and suburban flight. Purchased nearly 100 years ago by Henry Ford, the building passed through many hands in the subsequent decades, before being purchased again by the Ford Motor Company this year for redevelopment.

With designers from Snohetta, Ford is turning the structure into a hub for its autonomous vehicle development and deployment, making it an anchor for the company’s Corktown campus. Following restoration and renovation of the structure, originally designed by the same architects behind New York’s famous Grand Central Terminal, the mixed-use first floor concourse will be reopened to the public with restaurants and retail.

More on the restoration: “As Ford envisions the future of mobility, Ford and Snøhetta will rethink existing cities in addition to creating new urban spaces and mobility systems through responsible and sustainable urban planning, product design, and business practices. New and innovative roadways, parking facilities, and integrated pedestrian connections are just some of the design considerations that will highlight the positive impact of Ford’s future mobility technologies. Ford plans to implement the first City of Tomorrow study in Corktown, with other cities in mind for the future.”

For years, the building was a mecca for urban explorers who would enter illegally to explore and photograph the ruin, as well as a feature in numerous films and television shows. Going forward, it will once again become a kind of urban transportation hub, but one of a very different nature.

Michigan native and area resident George Gregory attended the public press conference outside the station announcing the plan, and noticed some changes on the site. “The fence is bigger and about 250 yards further back,” he observed, and the building looks better, presumably in part because the previous owner “put in new windows … and made other changes.” Leading up to the announcement, “rumors have abounded for weeks,” says Gregory. “Local real estate prices have skyrocketed. An abandoned hotel in the area has a For Sale sign on it.”

In a remote area of Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, a train stops just twice a day, as it has for years: once to pick up a girl on her way to school, and once to drop her back off afterward.

The otherwise-abandoned Kyu-Shirataki station remains open, thanks to Japan Railways, which honored the request of two parents to continue transporting their daughter back and forth until she graduates.

The physical space is remarkably well-kept despite its relative disuse, still containing route maps and schedules as any other station would, despite serving as essentially a single-person shelter for the place’s only daily passenger.

As the country’s population continues to shrink as well as urbanize, rural routes like this one have been forced to close – only high-speed railway lines remain on the rise. Fans of Japan Railways’ actions in this case see it as a victory for common courtesy as well as education. The line will ultimately close completely after the girl graduates and moves on (via CityLab).

Passing over the border between Turkey and Georgia isn’t an experience you’re soon to forget thanks to the surreal, undulating concrete customs checkpoint structure looming over the Black Sea. A major stop for business travelers, yet located in the sleepy village of Sarpi, the building offered a chance for the client – Georgia’s Ministry of Finance – to make a lasting impression on visitors, representing the new, modern incarnation of the formerly Soviet-run country.

The main volume of the building is low and long, lean as a ship, as if it’s making its way through the streets to launch itself into the water. From one end of this structure rises a strange tower with multiple cantilevered levels overlooking the coastline. It’s topped with a viewing platform, and in addition to the customs facilities, houses a cafeteria, staff rooms and a conference room.

Berlin-based architect J. Mayer H. wanted to represent “the progressive upsurge of the country” in visual form, departing from the usual architectural style of the region. While the highly unorthodox shape of the building fits in well with the rest of the architect’s oeuvre, including the Georgia rest stop pictured below, it’s also somehow fitting for a region still filled with bizarre Soviet monuments.

With its sculptural profile, the structure almost seems more like an oversized piece of public art than a functional building, reminiscent of the incredible futuristic concrete monuments built by the Soviets that can still be found in Yugoslavia today. In this sense, the Sarpi checkpoint almost seems retrofuturistic. Some people say it looks like an abstracted profile of Snoopy.