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.

Submerged sea vessels have long been destinations for diving tourists or (intentional or accidental) marine life habitats, but what if they could serve some function still visible on the surface of the water, like a memorial to those lost when the ship sunk?

The New Concordia Island Contest winners, Alexander Laing and Francesco Matteo Belfiore, propose slicing the section of the Italian cruise ship that crashed in January of 2012 and planting a garden in the resulting voids, leaving the lower, still-submerged areas as habitat zones.

The contest itself “aims to rethink the disaster of the ship Costa Concordia as exceptional opportunity to imagine the future of the wreck and that of the Island of Giglio. It is also a chance to wonder about needs for architecture to build new landscapes on traces and remains of a traumatic event …. The jury has selected the projects that have responded in a more comprehensive way to the questions raised by the contest, interweaving visionaries contents to pragmatic and real solutions.”

The clean and simple solution of the winning proposal defers to both nature and humans, a tribute to the disaster as well as the lives lost. Other intervention propositions of runner-up submissions trended toward either extreme: leaving the wreck mainly as-is and building around it, or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, creating underwater passageways and making the remaining structure physically accessible to people.

Why are we so interested in shipwrecks and other strange stories about underwater wonders of the world? The idea of ancient buried treasure, mysterious happenings, mystical pirate stories and awesome man-made underwater ecosystems all draw people toward mysteries, developments and disasters of the sea. Shipwrecks are so engaging to us for so many reasons, but what are the most famous, most historical, and most amazing shipwrecks of all? Well, here are some of the most spectacular shipwrecks around the world. (Guest author Andrew Boyd is an expert on travel hacks)

The Yongala Shipwreck [The Great Barrier Reef, Australia] Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is probably the most popular diving site in the world, and one of the most famous diving sites here is the S.S. Yongala wreck. The Yongala sank in a cyclone about 100 years ago taking the lives of all on-board – 121 people in all. Even after being submerged for so long, the Yongala is surprisingly well-preserved at its final resting place about 60 kilometers from Townsville in about 30 meters of water. The exact location is marked with a buoy.

S.S. Thistlegorm [Red Sea] The S.S. Thistlegorm was a British Merchant Navy ship that was sunk by a German bomb in 1941 as it carried guns, bombs, and ammunition on its way to Alexandria. The wreck was discovered by Jacques Cousteau in 1956 and has since become one of the most popular dive sites in the world. The wreck is located about 30 meters beneath the surface of the Red Sea just off the coast of the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. Divers can explore the the locomotives that were onboard at the time the Thistlegorm sank, the well-preserved guns and torpedos, various military vehicles that were being transported, and the location where the two 1,000 lb. German bombs hit the ship and led to its demise.

The ‘Black Swan’ Dive Site [Off the coast of Portugal] The so-called ‘Black Swan’ project involves the largest treasure ever discovered at sea. A Florida-based company by the name of Odyssey Marine Exploration is a group of modern-day treasure hunters, and they discovered the richest shipwreck ever found off the coast of Portugal in the Atlantic. Odyssey has been highly secretive about the exact location and the name of the shipwreck since they discovered it a few years back. So far, they’ve recovered 500,000 gold and silver coins worth approximately $254 million!

The government of Spain believes that this lost ship is the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, which was sunk by British war ships in 1804 along with 200 crew members. A historical account of the Mercedes says that there were 4,436,519 gold and silver pesos on-board at the time of its demise. This wreck led to Spain declaring war on Great Britain. Spain is now trying to get a piece of the lost treasure which they claim should be in a museum, but Odyssey most likely will be able to keep the majority of the gold and silver found at this amazing shipwreck.

The Titanic [North Atlantic Ocean] The Titanic is by far the most famous shipwreck of all time, which is in large part due to the popular movie released in the late 1990s. The Titanic set off on her maiden voyage in April of 1912 with 2,227 passengers and crew, and a few days later struck an iceberg then sank about 350 miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada. In the wreck, 1,522 people were lost at sea.

The Titanic wreck was discovered in 1985 approximately 12,500 feet below the surface of the North Atlantic. The wreck has been photographed by underwater remotely operated vehicles; it’s far too deep for scuba divers to dive here. The mystique surrounding the legacy of the Titanic will live on forever as people continue to be fascinated by this tragic shipwreck.

Pearl Harbor Fleet of Ships [Hawaii] The famous attack on a U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor claimed the lives of about 2,400 people and sparked the start of World War II for the United States. Over 300 planes bombed the harbor area in a surprise attack in 1941, and as you would expect, the wreckage was immense.

The Pearl Harbor attack wrecked five large Navy battleships, one minelayer, two destroyers, and damaged countless other Navy vessels and aircraft. The most famous wreck at Pearl Harbor is the USS Arizona. Today, a memorial stands at the site of the Arizona shipwreck where visitors can view the wreckage from a glass floor building built above the site.

The RMS Lusitania [Queenstown, Ireland] This gigantic ocean liner left New York City enroute to Liverpool on May 1, 1915 with nearly 2,000 passengers onboard. Despite warnings of German U-boats in the area, captain William Turner pressed on hoping to avoid their threat and arrive safely in England.

However, the Lusitania wasn’t so lucky. It was struck by a German torpedo and consequently sank within 18 minutes of being hit. The 785 foot long, 31,550 ton ship went down along with 1,195 passengers. The wreck now lies in about 295 feet of water and stands as a mass graveyard to all who lost their lives that cold, foggy night.