Bang Sue Railway Cemetery is located deep within a vast tract of land on the northwest side of Bangkok owned by the State Railway of Thailand. This land is home to Phahonyothin freight yard, the largest in Thailand, as well as numerous maintenance depots, engine shops, and other railway facilities. It is also the future site of Bang Sue Grand Station, set to be the largest railway station in Southeast Asia when construction is completed in the coming years. For decades the train cemetery hidden within these grounds has been known to urban explorers, so I decided to swing by and take a look while visiting in 2019.

Yuanlin 員林 is a modest settlement of approximately 125,000 residents located on the Changhua Plain 彰化平原 in eastern Changhua 彰化, Taiwan. It was formerly the most populous urban township in the nation, but Yuanlin was upgraded to a county-controlled city in 2015, second only to the administrative capital, Changhua City 彰化市. Considerable work has been done in recent years to improve the urban environment of Yuanlin, and it feels like one of the few places between Taichung 台中 and Tainan 台南 that isn’t falling into disrepair and emptying out. That being said, urban decay remains widespread in Yuanlin, and there are many interesting ruins worth exploring before they disappear. For students of city planning and development this compact city also has quite a lot to offer—and in this post I aim to introduce some of its more intriguing features, mainly drawing upon photographs from 2013 to 2015, when I was spending significant amounts of time in the area.

Yesterday I went on a short tour of Linkou 林口 inspired by the opening of the Taoyuan Airport MRT and the proliferation of YouBike stations to the exurbs of Taipei 台北. After spending some time under the sun I stopped to pick up some water at one of Taiwan’s ubiquitous convenience stores and noticed a weathered padmount transformer out front, pictured here.