Up in Antwerp, archaeologists have discovered a British LNER train carriage that has been buried in the Noordkasteel district of the northern port city for nearly 100 years. Lettering on the side of the carriage reveals that it dates from the tumultuous 1930s. The carriage was in such a fragile condition that it pulverised when archaeologists tried to bring it to the surface.
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100-year-old British LNER train carriage rises from the Flemish mud
Colin Clapson
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During excavations on the North Castle Walls, archaeologists suddenly encountered a metal structure. "At first we had no idea what we had bumped into," explains Lies Dierckx, one of the archaeologists who discovered the carriage. "We saw lettering on a kind of maroon metal container."
Not much later, they discovered that it was a train carriage belonging to the 'LNER', the London North Eastern Railway Company, one of Britain's Big Four railway companies that operated until nationalisation in 1948. It remains a mystery how the carriage ended up in Antwerp and how it came to be buried in the Flemish mud.
Completely pulverised
Unfortunately, the old carriage was so fragile that archaeologists found it impossible to recover their find intact. "The sides were not stable enough to remain standing," Dierckx explains. "During excavation work, the carriage toppled over and completely pulverised."
The excavations happened in January and were part of work on the Oosterweel Project, the completion of the Antwerp ring road.