Not really a railway trip but I did spend half an hour poking around the back of the old station at Famagusta. It was the headquarters of the 76cm gauge Cyprus Government Railway which was built by the British colonial authorities in 1904 and closed in 1951. The main station building is still in good condition. I’ve always treated it with caution as the island’s guidebooks say it’s now used as a police station. However, thanks to Google Translate, I now know that this is wrong and that in fact it’s the Famagusta District Land Registry, much more innocuous! Armed with this info I went to explore the derelict land behind the station and found that, amongst other things, the old loco repair shops still stand though they are now very dilpidated with rot running through the floors etc. The wording on the porch still reads “Locomotive Department” in very faded paint nearly 60 years after the railway closed. The steam loco is Hunslet 0-6-0T no. 1, built in 1904 for use on the construction of the railway and which then spent the rest of its life shunting around Famagusta yard and harbour. It’s lived on its plinth outside the station since 1953, the only one of the railway’s locos to survive.

Hunslet 0-6-0 loco in Cyprus

Station building of the former Cyprus Government Railway