Dépôt de Trains de Roux
THE ABANDONED TRAINS IN BELGIUM
About fifty abandoned trains are rusting away in this ‘Dépôt de Trains de Roux’. It is an abandoned locomotives depot in Roux. The depot was in use until the year 2000. After that the large halls and its rolling stock were left.
The railways in the Charleroi region were heavily bombed in 1944 to paralyze rail transport before the invasion in June 1944. The old buildings were destroyed The current depot buildings were built after the Second World War.
During my visit trees are covering the outdoor locomotives, while the trains inside the depot are slowly rusting away. The majority of locomotives were used in the Charleroi region as transport for the many industrial sites. Eventually with the decline of coking plants, coal mines and the transport of manufactured goods, many locomotives became useless. In this depot, the shunting or traction locomotives from the SNCB (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Belges) had been waiting since their withdrawal from active service to leave for scrapping.
The locomotives were all numbered and had names like Cordoba, Atlas, Colibri, Bolero or Albi.
Eventually the depot in Roux was cleaned in 2010. As a result all the rolling stock is gone, the hall is now an empty concrete carcass. I took these photos of the ‘Dépôt de Trains de Roux’ in 2007. Follow this link for more abandoned trains.
