– [Narrator] There's something about old, abandoned vehicles that many of us just can't tear our eyes away from. Whether it's a derelict car
left forgotten in a forest, or a monstrous old machine
abandoned in a meadow, you desperately want to know
how they ended up there. Luckily for you, I've done some digging and found the most
incredible abandoned vehicles on the planet for your viewing pleasure.
So, grab your popcorn and get comfy, as we take a tour of some derelict trains, planes and mad machines
that'll blow your mind. The Red Star Graveyard. On the northern fringe
of the city of Budapest lies the final rusting place of more than 100 different locomotives. Ranging from rare train
engines to rotting train cars, this depot, also known as
the Red Star Graveyard, is a derelict heaven for train fanatics. The depot was built in the
beginning of the 20th century as a repair yard but, as you can see, today most of it is abandoned, along with the trains inside. Some are astonishingly ancient, like this MAV 301 series engine that was last used more
than 100 years ago. But others, like these
MAV 424 steam engines, bear a red star on their
fronts from Hungary's time in the Soviet regime
back in the mid 1900's. It's unknown exactly how many
ancient trains lie rotting on these tracks, although it's clear that over the decades, they've slowly begun to lose their battle against nature.
In a few more years, these amazing trains will
likely be overrun by plant life, making this the end of their line. Strange Sögel Sights. From above, the quaint
German town of Sögel doesn't look like anything
out of the ordinary. But when you take a closer
look at one of the fields on its outskirts, you can see
something seriously strange. What do you think those 24, perfectly aligned little dots are? Hay bales? Tractors? Maybe some mutant strain of corn? Well, when you zoom in even further, you can just about make out that they are, in fact, tanks! Leopard 1 and M 47 Patton
tanks, to be exact. Curious urban explorers
have visited the site, noticing there's a sign nearby that says entry to this
field is forbidden, but when did that ever
stop urban explorers? As weird as they look planted
out in rows like that, these long abandoned, almost
50-ton tanks aren't just for show.
The rigid configuration
appears to be some kind of military shooting range. You can tell by the
swirling sets of tracks on the ground that this
place is probably used by other tanks for driving and target practice. However, any information
about this shooting range is kept top secret. Well, as top secret as 24 tanks sitting in an open field can be. Speaking of shooting, why don't you give it
your best shot to hit those like and subscribe
buttons down below? Did you get 'em? Great! Now what's next? Incredible Car Cemetery. Belgium is famous for its
fine chocolate and beer, but until 10 years ago, it was also home to one
of the most notorious and intriguing scrap yards in the world. Like a long-forgotten traffic jam, the lines of old cars
stretching out into the forest of the Châtillon Car Cemetery
was an astonishing sight to behold. Many of these were rusted American motors, which spurred a rumor that
they'd been left behind by American forces after
the Second World War ended.
But most of these cars
had been made 20 years or so after the war was over, so what was the real story
behind their abandonment? It was eventually revealed that the cars actually belonged to Canadian Air Force troops. Hundreds of them had been stationed in the nearby town of Virton on behalf of the NATO alliance
back in the late 1940s. But because the town was so small, the business of repairing
the troops' many cars fell on one lone mechanic in nearby Châtillon. However, when France
withdrew from NATO in 1966, the troops left, leaving the mechanic with hundreds of cars in a relatively tiny town.
Unable to sell them on, they lay rusting and
rotting over the years, until they were all sadly
cleared away in 2010. Wow, I think I just heard the hearts of all the classic car enthusiasts break. The Ghost Plane of Iceland. The volcanic, basalt black
sands of Iceland make up some of the most breath-taking
beaches on the planet. But while these sands are
astonishing by themselves, they're also home to one of the most out of place abandoned
vehicles in the world. This is the Sólheimasandur Plane Wreck, a twin-engine fuselage of an old Cargo plane hollowed out and stripped bare by decades
of punishing arctic winds.
Though it looks like a
post-apocalyptic grave, it's actually all that remains
of the terrifying events from November 21st, 1973. On that day, the five-man crew of the C-117 plane were making their way to a US naval station in Iceland, when temperatures suddenly plunged to a frosty 14° Fahrenheit. 60 mile per hour arctic
gusts pummeled them, and ice terrifyingly froze
up both the plane's engines. The plane dropped out of the sky and crash landed on the beach, but miraculously, every
man on board survived without so much as a scratch. The US military eventually rescued them and began stripping the grounded plane of everything it had.
They clipped its wings,
removed its engines, and took anything that was salvageable, leaving the five-ton shell
littered on the beach. That's pretty rude,
although it has left Iceland with a free tourist attraction. Spooky Shores of Kiska. The remote island of Kiska, which is part of Alaska's
Aleutian Islands, is a 22-mile-long landmass that isn't populated by a single soul.
Without any roads or buildings
on its barren shores, it's the last place you'd expect to find any abandoned vehicles. So, you might be shocked to discover that its shorelines are littered with old anti-aircraft
guns, rusting ships, and even submarines. Even though many of them
are more than 80 years old, Alaska's cold climate
has kept most of them incredibly well preserved! Especially these Japanese
Type A midget submarines. At just 78 feet long and
less than 6 feet wide, these sneaky submarines were used to infiltrate enemy waters. But if they were caught, they were small enough that the Japanese could claim they were just target practice.
However, they were also
armed with torpedoes, and some were even used
in the famous attack of Pearl harbor. So, what are their rusting
remains doing way out in Kiska? It turns out they're from
a little-known battle that occurred in Alaska
during World War II. At the time, Kiska was home to an American-manned weather station which was captured by the Japanese. In response to the occupation, American and Canadian
forces waged an air campaign against the island, which
was bombarded and blockaded for an entire year. Overpowered and outgunned, in 1943, the Imperial Japanese
Navy quickly retreated from the Aleutian Islands. But not before blowing out the hulls of any ships and subs
they had to leave behind so that their enemies couldn't use them. That battle may not be
found in many history books, but that story of supreme
pettiness is definitely one for the ages.
Abandoned Turbo Train. The 20th Century Space
Race fueled a competition between the United
States and Soviet Russia to see who could create the
bigger and better rocket ship. But this also led to the
creation of another super-fast, jet propelled vehicle,
The Turbo Jet Train. It was created back in the 1960s by American engineer Don Wetzel, who'd been tasked with creating a faster and cheaper locomotive. Wetzel had the wacky idea
of adding jet engines onto trains to propel
them along the tracks, and the resulting M-497 boasted two 5,000 horsepower jet engines. These were placed on the
front of the train just to make it look cooler,
and when it was tested, it was able to reach an
astonishing 183 miles per hour.
This incredible locomotive
development inspired the Soviets to build their own Jet Trains, and by the 1970s this
amazing machine was born. The head of an old ER22
engine had been redesigned and modernized, with two turbojet engines from a Yakovlev YAK-40 plonked on the top. But when pushed to its limit, the train only reached
about 155 miles per hour. Though it still sounds awesome, right? Well, outshined by its
American counterpart, as well as being loud
and costly to operate, the prototype was abandoned. It was moved to an unused track behind a rail car factory near Doroshikha where it lay forgotten
for more than 40 years. Even though it looks like it'd fall apart with a light touch now, I bet a ride on this train in its heyday would have been off the rails. Rusting River Rockets. Now, Turbo Trains weren't
the only crazy inventions that the Soviets brought to the table.
In 1957, the Soviet
Union began manufacturing these utterly incredible hydrofoil boats. They could travel much faster than regular boats because they
were lifted out of the water on a set of submerged wings. This reduced the boats drag massively, and let it skim over
the water like a stone. These Russian river
rockets, called Raketa, carried passengers along
river ways at a top speed of 43 miles per hour, more than three times the
speed of similarly sized boats at the time. They were a huge success, but following the collapse
of the Soviet Union, many couldn't be maintained and were sent to rust in
ship graveyards like this. Most of the river rockets in these photos are called Meteors, which is a second-generation design that was faster than the Raketa and could carry up to 160 passengers. But today, many of them are rusting away in a forest near the Kama Reservoir, close to the city of Perm.
Somehow, even in this dilapidated state, they still look as majestic
as they did in their heyday. Lonely Lun-class Ekranoplan. When it comes to abandoned vehicles, the jewel in the Soviet's
crazy crown has to be the little-known Lun-class Ekranoplan. This top-secret military vehicle
was a 242 feet long beast that relied on the lesser
known "wing-in-ground" effect to get around. As an aircraft flies closer to the ground, air pressure builds between
the wing and the surface below, creating a cushion of
air beneath the plane. So, with a set of
specially designed wings, the Ekranoplan could skate just inches over any ocean or lake,
and under the radar of enemy warships. With the aid of those eight
forward mounted turbo jets, this brilliant behemoth
could reach a top speed of 340 miles per hour, so it combined the capacity of a boat with the speed of a plane. Unfortunately, just one
Ekranoplan prototype, nicknamed the Caspian Sea Monster, was completed when the Soviet
Union crumbled in 1991. The Lun program was discontinued, and the Caspian Sea Monster
was left sitting idly on a tightly guarded dock on the coast of Russia's Daghestan region.
For almost 30 years the
beast was left to sleep, until its slumber was
disturbed in July 2020. It was finally being towed
to a new museum home, but after making its way
almost 100 kilometers over the Caspian Sea, it ran aground on the
sandy shores of Derbent. A mind-blowing 264 tons, the monster was too heavy
to be pulled ashore, and so it remained abandoned on the beach for another five months. I don't know about you, but watching all those kids play next to a literal war machine has to be one of the most Russian things I've ever seen. Missing Mil Mi-6. So, this next Soviet-era
vehicle may not be as strange as the Jet
Trains, the River rockets, or the enormous Ekranoplan, but the way it's been
abandoned is truly bizarre. Out in the marshes of Russia's
Yamalo-Nenets district, almost 1,500 miles from
the capital of Moscow, there's something steely
lurking in the swamps. Though it looks like a beast, it's actually the wreckage of an old Mil Mi-6 helicopter.
When they were first
produced back in the 1950s, these 108 feet long behemoths
weighed a staggering 30 tons and were easily the largest
helicopters the world had ever seen. But in 1981, the crew
of this Mi-6 were flying at an altitude of just
under 500 feet when, all of a sudden, both the
chopper's engines gave out. The five-man crew crashed
into the swamp below, but, by some miracle,
none of them were injured. The Mi-6, on the other hand,
suffered some serious damage. An investigation later found that refueling workers had accidentally filled
the chopper's tank up with a gasoline-water mix, causing its engines to fail. But no plans were ever made
to retrieve the vehicle. Instead, it's sat abandoned in the swamp for more than 40 years, during which time its engines and even its tail
section have been stolen.
That's enough to send
any aircraft enthusiast into a tailspin. The Amazing MAZ. Did you think the list of derelict Soviet vehicles stopped there? Well, just feast your eyes
on this abandoned MAZ-7904. With all those wheels
and that split cabin, it looks like some sort of
giant, mechanized caterpillar. These old Soviet MAZ trucks and tractors were
designed during the height of the Cold War to carry all manner of increasingly massive nuclear missiles. So much so, the MAZ-7904 was a six-axle, 12-wheeled beast designed
to carry loads of up to an eye-watering 220 tons.
But the chassis alone
weighed around 140 tons, meaning its huge, nine
feet diameter wheels had to support a staggering 30 tons each. The weighty design was
such a critical issue for this vehicle's development, that no less than 100
specialists were brought in to ensure it would work. Despite its weight issue, it was rolled out in 1983
measuring over 100 feet long and 22 feet wide. The specialists had fitted it with a turbocharged 42.2 liter engine, so it could produce a
hefty 1500 horsepower. But dragging all that weight
meant it had a maximum speed of just 16 miles per hour. On top of that, the prototype
handled incredibly poorly, which is the last thing you want to hear about a vehicle carrying
world-ending nukes. Despite all the effort
that went into making it, it never carried a nuke, and the prototype was left to rust in a hanger in Kazakhstan. By 2007, its tires were
unrecognizably deflated, parts of it had been stolen or salvaged, and all it was good for was a handful of photo shoots.
Its remnants were
eventually scrapped in 2010, much to the disappointment
of all the other cool kids who wanted photographs
posing next to it, I'm sure. The McBarge. Even though it doesn't boast a set of big golden arches, you probably guessed from the name that The McBarge once belonged to the McDonald's Corporation. It was built back in 1986
for Vancouver's World Fair, which was held on the
shores of False Creek. So, McDonald's took this
opportunity to show off a new floating design for
their future restaurants.
They constructed a brand-new,
one-of-a-kind restaurant on a 187-feet-long barge
for a whopping $12 million, that's around $26 million today. They cornily named it The Friendship 500, a pun that's so bad it
makes my jokes look good. The 8,500 square foot
restaurant was designed to float to waterfront locations, bringing Big Macs to
shores all over the world. It was pretty popular at
the six-month World Expo, where it was jokingly
nicknamed The McBarge. But just five years later, residents were over the novelty, and the shorefront owners
ordered the McBarge to go. It was floated over to the
less-populated Burrard Inlet in 1991, but instead of
bringing in business, it was just left to rot. For more than 30 years, the McBarge has slowly
decayed on the coast, gathering dust as well as graffiti.
The inside still boasts
that classic '80s decor, although most of the interior
has been ravaged by decay and vandalism. The windows are covered
in grime and spray paint, the floors and walls are filthy, and at one point there were even boxes of old products left on board. It may have been popular in the '80s, but it's the last place
you'd want to eat in now.
The Herkimer Battle Jitney. Scrap yards are filled to the brim with all kinds of abandoned vehicles, but some, like this
brilliantly bizarre example, really stand out from the rest. Discovered in a surplus
yard out in America, the triple axled, six-wheel
vehicle is unlike any other van, truck, or car I've ever seen. It's truly one of a kind. So, what's it doing in a scrapheap? Well, it turns out this isn't someone's
abandoned passion project, it's actually got a little
bit of fame behind it. Now, many of you will
be too young to remember "The Mystery Men," a classic '90s film about a
group of inept superheroes tasked with saving a
city from destruction. In it, the good guys
hilariously acquire a beast of a vehicle named the
Herkimer Battle Jitney. It looked so well put together in the film that it had many movie fans wondering if it was a real vehicle.
Some even claiming it
was a heavy troop vehicle called the Z17 Marauder, which had been contracted
by the US government. In reality though, the Jitney was just a custom-built vehicle made specifically for the film. Its running gear was
a 1979 ford semi-truck with the cab removed, and the body was a
modified Airstream camper. But its heavily customized
appearance meant it couldn't be re-used in any other films, and so, sadly, it was left to gather dust. Maybe it'll get an ending fit
for a superhero in the future.
The Vacant Victor. Until 2020, an imposing looking aircraft guarded the gates of
Marham's Royal Air Force base in England. It was a Handley Page Victor, a British, jet-powered, strategic bomber that was designed back in the
1950's during the Cold War. At just over 140 feet in length, and with a wingspan of 110 feet, these amazing aircraft could carry up to 17 and a half tons of bombs. Or one five-ton free-fall gravity bomb, which is a nice way of
saying one very big nuke.
They certainly made an impact
when they took to the skies, but when the war ended in 1991, there wasn't much use for them. The last of these models
was retired in 1993, but the cost to restore and
maintain them was so great that the RAF was giving them away to the public for free. Sadly, very few people had the space and resources to accommodate
such massive planes, and while some models
found homes in museums, others like this one were relegated to RAF Marham's fire pit. As you can see, the windscreens have all but been blown out, the inside has been blackened by fire, and the rest of it has
been completely gutted. Here, the once proud
bomber was used for drills, firefighting and target
practice by the RAF, until it was scrapped back in 1995. Wow, seeing that vintage
bomber burned out like that is a bummer. Ditched Lambo. With great horsepower
comes great responsibility, something that the owner of
this Lamborghini Huracan forgot, along with his car, back in 2019. Cameraman Andrew Lawrence was traveling through North London, England, early one morning when he suddenly spotted this
$250,000 purple supercar lying in a road-side gully. The Lambo was facing the wrong way and was in a ditch on the
wrong side of the road, with its driver's side door jammed against the ground.
But when Andrew looked around, the owner was nowhere in sight. How tempted do you think he
was to call in a tow truck and claim it was his? Being a better man than most, Andrew called the police and tried to locate the car's owner. It turned out that it
belonged to Bitstocks founder and Bitcoin millionaire, Michael Hudson. He'd been driving down the road when the car hit a puddle of water and aquaplaned off into the ditch. But, instead of calling in a tow truck, he abandoned the Lambo and
walked off to get help. Fortunately, the damage to
the quarter-million-dollar car was pretty minimal, and
he was able to get it back on the road soon enough. With all that money, I wonder if he'll think about investing in some driving lessons? Holy Abandonment, Batman! If you ask me, the best
Batman films are the ones where Michael Keaton took on the role of the caped crusader.
Everything about them was timeless, the costume, the gadgets, Michelle Pfeifer as
Catwoman, oh my god, the car, although, that last one
actually hasn't aged too well, as you can see. Back in 2019, the armored shell of a Keaton-era Batmobile
was discovered rusting in a scrapyard. It'd clearly been there for
some time, but amazingly, it wasn't the only one
to have been abandoned. In 2020, another Batmobile
body was discovered in a scrap yard over in New York. Now, obviously, there's only one batman, so where did these two bodies come from? It appears that big Batman
fans built these replica bodies from personal DIY kits.
But as their obsession
with the Dark Knight faded, so did the love of their custom kits, which they decided to scrap. Although, they might live
to regret that choice. In 2019, this perfect working replica of the Keaton-mobile was put on eBay. Listed as having 400 horsepower under the hood and being
totally road legal, this thing had a price tag
of a wallet-busting $680,000! After seeing that price tag, leaving the parts of one of these in the forest suddenly seems
like a real joker move. The Abandoned Blue Wonder. The gorgeous green meadows
of Schipkau, Germany, are home to an abandoned
attraction that really stands out.
Stretching almost 170 feet into the sky, with a 40 foot diameter
chainsaw-looking wheel at one end, this rusty colossus
looks like a weapon built to fight King Kong. When urban explorers
discovered the vehicle back in 2002, they believed
it was a Bagger 258; a massive bucket wheel
excavator used as part of a continuous mining system. As the wheel at the front
of the machine turned, those huge buckets attached
to it would scoop up earth before dropping it onto a
conveyor belt to be processed. It was a bit like a factory, although this factory was
mounted onto tank-like tracks that could move at a top speed of around 20 feet per minute. However, as more and more
explorers came to marvel at this massive, abandoned machine, they realized it actually
wasn't a Bagger 258, but a Bagger 1473. It had been built back in 1965 and was once affectionately called The Blue Wonder thanks to
its beautiful blue paint job. Its buckets could each shovel up to a staggering 52 cubic feet of earth. So, in less than 150 full rotations, this thing could scoop up enough soil to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool.
Although not anymore. It was abandoned in 2002
because it had run out of things to dig and was way too big and costly to transport elsewhere. Today, it's a protected
landmark that makes for an interesting photo. Or, if you're a super
crazy urban explorer, it can make one hell of a rope swing. Which of these derelict
vehicles would you most like to see revived? And do you know of any other phenomenal rusting places? Let me know down in the comments below, and thanks for watching. (light upbeat music).
