It’s pretty difficult to hide a train but someone ended up being successful. Archaeologists excavating a 19th-century fortress in Belgium made the shocking discovery of a nearly 100-year-old train from England.
The London North Eastern Railway said that the researchers working to uncover the Northern Citadel in Antwerp, Belgium, found a dark red train car marked with the LNER logo. The company was able to identify the discovery as a “removals” car, which was normally meant for moving property from a person’s former home to a new residence.
“The wooden removals truck is thought to be around one hundred years old,” consultant archaeologist Femke Martens said. “It’s a mystery as to how the carriage came to be in Antwerp, and unfortunately there’s very little left of the relic as it disintegrated while being excavated.”
LNER researchers said that the car was apparently the very first model of a removals car. This type of vehicle was used only briefly around 1930 before the company replaced them with updated blue models.
According to the company, researchers are still trying to figure out how the car was buried 500 miles from LNER’s British headquarters.
“This curious find has certainly generated lots of interest and we are delighted the team from the Urban Archaeology department of the City of Antwerp have helped shed more light on the discovery,” LNER spokesman Stuart Thomas said. “We’re fascinated by LNER’s history, and we’d like to thank the team for their help in unearthing more information about LNER’s proud past.”