<![CDATA[Forbidden Places]]> Commentics <![CDATA[Forbidden Places]]> 16 16 Garry McDougall Travelled through 2018, on my ourney along the length of the Pyrenees. Taking public transport only. Crossing every border road. Very few public transports went into the other country, Spain or France, so forced to hitchhike a number of times. Currently writing the story as "Border and Soul". Visiting Canfrance was a plesure when I have been very familiar with Pau and Jaca.

]]> Thu, 08 Jul 2021 03:44:14 +0200 item_16136 Dick Bird Not quite renovated yet, but they're working on it and there is definitely tourist potential and official will. You can do a guided tour, if your Spanish is up to it.

]]> Fri, 06 Dec 2019 03:33:56 +0100 item_16073 paul furlong We walked here in Oct 2014 from Orloron via the Somport Pass on our way to Pamplona following the Ancient pilgrim way to Santiago .
you can visit the station on a guided tour for a few euros , the town itself and surrounding mountain paths are well worth a visit .Many good value restuarants and a super new hostal open to non pilgrims for only 10 euros per night.
In november on our way back by train and bus we had a longer look at this amazing building then got the bus back to Orloron .

On the way up from Orloron we came across workers clearing the mass of vegetation on the line in preparation for its reopening to Bedous, it will never again go all the way to Somport but al least some of this slendid infrastrure will be put to some use .
It is heartbreaking as you walk up the valley to think of the now wasted labour that went into the tunnels and viaducts. I would call all of it works of great industrial art .
I agree with another comments here that say "please turn it into a cycle and walking path".It would be nothing less than wonderful and as more and more "Pilgrims" walk the way or Camino to Santiago I believe it could have a great future . The way of St james is a linear world heritage site , the original path eaten up by the road the disused railway is PERFECT and would become a major touristic infrastructure benefiting the valleys on both sides . Heres is hoping !!

Paul Furlong furlong.paul@wanadoo.fr please mail me if you want to get involved or agree with me .

]]> Tue, 16 Dec 2014 11:17:00 +0100 item_14045 suzy Hi to everyone!
Yesterday I watched the new movie " El Rey de CanFranc " which I recommend to everyone interested in this wonderful train station. I enjoyed every moment of it, it is full of history involving CanFranc.

]]> Tue, 15 Oct 2013 10:59:00 +0200 item_11431 Thomas Allen Visited the site on 13th August, 2013. Guided tours to the main building are available in July and August, through the local tourist office. All were fully booked!

The remainder of the railway site is accessible throughout, despite signs saying 'No Pasar' which were totally ignored by everyone.

You can go inside the huge roundhouse locomotive depot, the transhipment sheds and various other buildings. All are now long since disused and falling down.

Text and visit photoshttp://wp.me/p16mGY-tm

Trains run to Canfranc twice a day from Zaragoza, there are infrequent train / bus connections from Pau (France) via Oloron St Marie and a local bus service from Jaca.

]]> Fri, 16 Aug 2013 11:07:00 +0200 item_11299 Joke Weier I visited the station Canfranc in 2008, at that moment they where busy to renovated the main building.
Today 18 April 2013, was my second visited. the complete roof is renovated. At the outside. The train is running again.
But there is NO single sign, that this most beautiful building will be restored again.
The rest is of the buildings are almost down.
A bloody shame!

]]> Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:44:00 +0200 item_10802 jack bramwell VFL Park Australia is/was the Canfranc of football stadiums in the world and was to be the biggest in the world. Opened 1970 closed 2000. See youtube "Remembering VFL Park!!!"

]]> Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:28:00 +0200 item_10745 denis le jeune I visited this station in June 2012 and there's no evidence of its being "renovated to a luxurious hotel"!

]]> Thu, 22 Nov 2012 13:19:00 +0100 item_10371 Peter A fascinating description of the Canfranc station is found in Margaret Vail's book "Yours is the Earth" which describes the escape of both herself and her four-year old daughter over the Pyrenees to get away from the Nazis, in November of 1942. Anyone interested in the Pyrenees escape routes should get a copy. She was afraid she would take the wrong door to leave the restaurant and end up back in France.

]]> Mon, 22 Oct 2012 02:54:00 +0200 item_10238 cristofa Thanks for putting together that information. I've been sorting old pictures and wanted to caption my Canfranc photos from 1999 before uploading them to flickr. The more I read, the more fascinating the story! What amazes most is that 'they' should have built the 'largest station in Europe' there – it seems so totally out of place!

]]> Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:38:00 +0200 item_8519 Phil We stumbled over this magnificent rail relic last week, and like Suzy, were delighted to find great work done to restore the roof of the main building. However, I do hope that it does become a hotel. We were not able to even get in to the main building. There is nothing wrong with making a building like this work for its living, and it will still be available for the public to see. Anyone can take tea at the Ritz Hotel in London and look around the public rooms!
I would like to learn more about the operation of the railway during its heyday. It must have been a fantastic experience to arrive here on a train from France, and go through Customs and then change trains for Spanish destinations.
We also followed the line of the old track north of the tunnel in France, and stopped briefly at Urdos station. What a beautiful journey that must have been on the train!

]]> Mon, 04 Oct 2010 09:53:00 +0200 item_7711 suzy I would like to tell everyone here that I have just been to Canfranc station and right now the roof has been repaired which is very positive but nothing else has been done. The main building is closed but you can still wander around this fantastic place. I do hope it will never become a hotel.

]]> Sun, 19 Sep 2010 20:38:00 +0200 item_7650 shawn Just wanted to say I'm impressed with your site and with the information you provide. Nice work!

]]> Sat, 26 Sep 2009 22:33:00 +0200 item_4621 hughonabike I traveled over the Somport pass into Spain December 2006 and was blown away by the breathtaking beauty of the area. I´ll be passing tho´again in May 2009 and plan to spend some time exploring on mountain bike. The weather should be warmer, I hope. Just a thought: It seems such a shame to let the fantastic civil engineering feat that is the disused railway line through the pass crumble and rot. Obviously, it´ll never be used for trains again. How about reusing it as a walkway come cycle path like the Via Verdes in Spain. Now would´nt that be a great weekend destination.

]]> Fri, 08 May 2009 17:15:00 +0200 item_3878 chris We visited the station in May, 2008, not much work seemed to be in progress, but the modern clock was working, I do not suppose the station will ever be finished !

]]> Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:07:00 +0200 item_3799 Erik Eilertsen There was an article in one of the magazine supplements to the Sunday paper yesterday, 25 Jan 09, and a pic of CANFRANC but it was barely mentioned in the text. The pic of the obviously once magnificent / now abandoned place intrigued me and I googled it.
My wife and I thought this kind of dereliction only happened in Africa! (not really, people are people but such dereliction in Europe surprised us).
What a fabulous place and the use of the Titanic as a simile by someone was just perfect. Also, what a waste of infrastructure to leave the line closed on the French side! The whole thing could be a revenue earner if they put steam trains and other vintage trains on the lines for the enthusiasts!!
You should go to Mocambique and Angola and see some once fabulous places and how they have been destroyed!

]]> Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:10:00 +0100 item_3496 60613 What you describe as a luggage room may have been a customs room - where luggage and documents were inspected before crossing into the next country.

]]> Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:10:00 +0100 item_3426 Tom Back in 1975 i took the train to the end of the line from Zaragoza and ended up at this station. It was winter and i hicked up into the hills and camped out for the night. Middle of the night it starts to snow very hard so i hick back to the station and slept next to one of the hot water radiators. The guardia civil came in and checked me out and let me stay. That old building was something else to see back then .... unbelievable..!!

]]> Sat, 08 Nov 2008 07:15:00 +0100 item_3066 Dirkjan Krijnders I visisted Canfranc at the end of May 2008, the main building is indeed being renovated, so no access to the inside. It seems it will be a hotel/conference centre. The rest of site, buildings, tracks, abandoned carriages, is still untouched, you can just walk around the station bulding. I have made of pictures of the site and will post a link when I have them online. Btw. the Zaragoza line to Canfranc is still running with a simple railbus. The european union also granted a subsidy to reopen the french side, but the they seems unwilling ...

]]> Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:11:00 +0200 item_2185 dave shakespeare Although somebody has suggested turning the station into a hotel is a negative result I have to disagree. I passed through Canfranc in May 2000 whilst cycling from Gibraltar to Uk and again the following year by car it was one of the highlights although be warned mid ski/summer season offers little in the way of hotels or Hostals. My wife and I then considered the fate of the derelict station the most appaling example of State vandalism imaginable as a rail enthusiast I believe it is the most incredible piece of architecture and well worth a visit if only to marvel at the size and detail in it's construction. We both thought it should be preserved and I have to admit that it can never return to it's original use as a railway station or at least as a border crossing/ customs post so to learn that something is being made of it rather than see it slowly fall down or be set on fire is a relief. Thanks for creating this page.

]]> Wed, 14 May 2008 11:12:00 +0200 item_2078 chiinhooi I cycled from Oloron to Col du Somport today (7th May 2008), which means I pretty much cycled along this railway line until the Spanish border. I think it is tragic that the system has been abandoned because so much engineering work was put into it. I only saw the French part of it, but bridges built over gorges, tunnels and lines cut into the mountain face.... all this abandoned with its fate sealed with the conversion of the station into a hotel?! Unbelievable....

]]> Sun, 11 May 2008 22:18:00 +0200 item_2068 Greg Kane Very Nice Site, thank you, I stumbled upon Canfranc Station with two friends in 1991, like Kate below. We explored the place for a few hours but we couldn't get it out of our systems and we went back a couple of weeks later and spent most of a day there. Words fail me. This is a truly truly amazing place. It's beautiful. It's in a place of stunning natural beauty and it's steeped in sad loneliness. Walking around it feels sort of like visiting the Titanic, but you don't need a submarine. I realise that probably the only people who visit this website will be people who have already been to Canfranc and that's sad too. I take about 150 flights a year and I get to see a lot of things, but I've seen nothing else to rival Canfranc Station. Thanks for sharing your photos and words. I'll be in Spain in a few weeks and I'm planning to drive 2 hours out of my way [and back] just to have the chance to live and breathe the place again. A question for Brian below: Brian, when you visited in '06, were you still able to access the interiors of the buildings and the tunnel walkways? Greg Kane, Dublin

]]> Sun, 26 Dec 2004 02:55:00 +0100 item_428 R. W. Rynerson Thank you for the many questions answered in your site. Several friends have asked me to write up my story of traveling this route in 1971, and it is now posted in my website: "Berlin 1969" (found in Google). I traveled from Berlin to ride this rail line, based on the train schedules still published in the DB's "Ausland Kursbuch" and the French "Indicateur Officiel Grandes Relations" with no reference to the bus. Local people were wonderful, but it was a shock to find out that a year after the line's closure, information about the "bustitution" had not been circulated.

]]> Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:01:00 +0100 item_388 Kate I visited Canfranc in 1991 whilst interrailing. The train took hours to wind up from Zaragoza to the immense station in the middle of the mountains with 21 railway tracks and sidings. And a bricked up tunnel. I spent two days wandering around Canfranc station, and it burnt its way into my imagination. It is a sad place, full of faded glamour and past glory, and is an incredibly incongruous place to find in the middle of the mountains. I always wondered whether the tunnel would be reopened for rail traffic, and now I know otherwise, which is quite sad. I am hoping to visit Canfranc with my husband later this year. Now he will get to see what I have been going on about for so many years.

]]> Sat, 28 Aug 2004 09:25:00 +0200 item_180 trevor rollo I visited the site on 01/09/2007 and it has now lost its former glory due to the development of the site(which means no close access) and the fact no trains now get this far. The site is being developed into a hotel from what i could gather though the frontage may be restored to its formwe glory as part of the scheme

]]> Sun, 27 Jun 2004 06:04:00 +0200 item_626 Dagmara A bit with a feeling of "welcome to the Canfranc-Estacion fanclub", I'd like first to thank the website's authors for its excellent content and design. This forum's given me some food for thought, too. I wonder if anyone knows how long the station was in use as the end station for the Zaragozza line after the 1970 accident? Kate wrote she'd been there (changing trains?) in 1991. A piece of information I'd like to share with you is about the old railway tunnel: as far as I know it's used by the Zaragozza University as a location for their particle physics laboratory.

]]> Sat, 26 Jun 2004 23:28:00 +0200 item_562 Phil Peck Just like Greg Kane, I stumbled upon Canfranc Station - but just 2 days ago! Unfortunately, I don't have all the details but I can tell you the site is most definately being developed and it is not possible to get into the building itself. I could kick myself for not taking a photo of the information board there, explaining exactly what the develpment involved. From recollection it is a government funded project to restore the Station to it's former glory. The roof has been completely removed & the whole structure is now swathed in scaffolding & covered by sheet metal & plastic sheeting. I took several external photos of the structure as it now stands & will get them posted online in the near future. When I do, I'll pop back here & post a link to them.

]]> Sat, 26 Jun 2004 09:39:00 +0200 item_549 Brian Very interesting. Hope your page encourages people to visit Canfranc. I went this summer amd found it fascinating. Work has started on converting part of the station into a luxury hotel, and there's a new book out in Spanish called "La estación espía" about all the clandestine activity in the area during World War II. I recommend the Casa Marieta pension for a comfortable stay and gourmet food.

]]> Sat, 26 Jun 2004 09:29:00 +0200 item_389