As you drive through Asuncion you sometimes cross all railway crossings and there's an old station near downtown where old trains and carriages litter the side of the road. Heading out of the city to the southeast you frequently pass solitary station buildings which sit in once-thriving villages but what now seem like little ghost towns. Paraguay used to have a great railway system with the kinds of early 1900's steam trains people these days love to see due to their rarity, however the railway was shut down several years ago.
In the typical lack of foresight, most of the train tracks were pulled up, and engines left to corrode where they last stopped. Although it was all working just 7 years ago (including a tourist train until a bridge on its small route recently collapsed), it looks now like it stopped in 1910 such is the scale of the decay.
This past week I got to head out of the city along the route of the old track towards Paraguari, a town southeast of Asuncion where SIM Paraguay had it's yearly Spiritual Retreat. The retreat centre was out in the wilds, but not far off was one of the lonely old stations which also had a museum to Paraguay's forgotten trains. Here are some pictures:
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