What Really Happens To Trains After They're Retired

You might be diving off the Atlantic coast of the United States when, suddenly, you see a barnacle-encrusted train car lying on the ocean floor, its only passengers a cohort of fish. Dumping train cars in the ocean is, believe it or not, one of the actual things that happens to the cars after they're retired — in New York City, at least, as CNN reported. Every city in the U.S. deals with its old train cars in different ways. Sometimes they're crushed into scrap, and their metal is recycled, but in other cases they end up in museums, or train graveyards, or, yes, the ocean.

The train cars of NYC's chaotic subway system were dumped into the ocean as part of the city's Redbird Reef project, which was designed to repurpose the cars as a new reef for sea life. It was also more cost-effective than recycling them. According to CNN, the cars would be stripped of reusable parts (like seats), then stacked onto a barge. They were dropped at designated spots all along the East Coast, including Delaware, South Carolina, and Georgia.

In many cases, retired train cars are recycled. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), for example, stated that most of its old cars get deconstructed and sent to metal recycling facilities. First, hazardous parts are removed and working parts are taken off the cars for reuse. Then, the skeletal cars are transported to a recycling facility, which sorts and pulverizes the metals into shreds. Sometimes, train cars get recycled in some fascinating ways. In 2018, for example, People for Urban Progress partnered with Amtrak to make bags and card holders out of the seat leather from old trains.

When they're not recycled or left at dump sites, some train cars are sent to museums or preserved in other unique ways. You'll find the largest museum in the U.S. dedicated to trains in Illinois, at the Illinois Railway Museum. The museum's collection includes everything from 19th-century steam engine trains to electric Amtrak cars. It also has at least one historic train in motion on each open day that you can ride, circling the museum grounds. It's located in Union, Illinois, just over an hour by car from Downtown Chicago and neighboring Huntley, the friendly village with cozy eateries and eclectic shops.

If you're more drawn to the idea of seeing train cars deserted, left to be consumed by nature, you might consider a trip to the northern hinterlands of Maine. Here, you can hike along the roughly 2-mile Eagle Lake Locomotives Trail to find the old, corroded train cars of the Eagle Lake and West Branch Railroad. According to the Maine Department of Agriculture, there are two locomotives here — dating to 1897 and 1901 — that are abandoned in the woods, sitting along the trail.

Other retired train cars around the country have found a different type of second life. One of the most interesting examples is the Red Caboose Motel in Ronks, Pennsylvania (the town that's also home to one of America's best corn mazes). The motel is made up of 38 train cabooses, accoutred with beds, TVs, and private bathrooms. It also has a well-reviewed restaurant, Casey Jones', that operates in two repurposed dining cars from the Pennsylvania Railroad.