You might have noticed before that Verb co-founder Avo Hadjian likes trains. Turns out that he has wanted to photograph old soviet-era train engines since traveling from Moscow to Beijing in the Trans-Siberian Express in the early nineties. He finally had his chance on a special photo assignment for the Christian Science Monitor newspaper earlier this year.
He found the old trains at the Istvántelek train yard outside Budapest, Hungary. Some of the old steam engines and formations there have traversed Europe, and time, from the yard’s construction in 1905 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Avo’s images tell their story, starting from empires, through world wars, to their final stop where nature claims them.
Here’s a brief selection Avo made just for us at Verb from over 700 photos he took in his visit. They are almost as evocative as Avo’s writing, but you can always ask him for more stories whenever you want to follow this train of thought.