Abandoned Christmas Village

Up next on the urbex adventure list was a really cool little spot that was full of surprises. We took a very long drive up towards Maine to check out some old abandoned transportation museum, roomer to have a bunch of old vehicles on the property like train cars and and broken down trucks. The drive was beautiful taking us up some amazing scenic views but when we finally arrived we were met with so much more than we expected... The property itself was very large set back on a winding dirt road, it had a trail that went along the front and all the way though a backyard with trails leading up to the woods behind it. The front was inciting right away with several old small train cars scattered about, I found in my research online that it was also once a Christmas attraction as well as a museum for the local families to visit over holiday break, you could clearly see the path that lots of happy kids walked along to view the displays. The small trains once ran on a track are now heavily overgrown but you could see how it fun it would of been as a kid to visit here, some of the attractions included, "A scaled down re-creation of a typical old New England village, a barber shop, general store, one-room school house, cobbler shop and other shops that supplied the village's needs. An extensive collection of horse-drawn vehicles, sleighs, wagons and buggies. Examples of New England 2 foot narrow gauge railroad engines, rolling stock and memorabilia. Vintage clothing items for men, women and children. World Famous Christmas Animations, logging Exhibit, maple Exhibit. Steam Train Rides. "Little Engine That Could" will be set to work on real special occasions providing a short ride behind a 2-foot narrow gauge engine. These are the engines that powered many a rural railroad and brought the goods to market from logging camps, farms, ice ponds and granite quarries. Fully operational grist mill, sugar house and sawmill, with demonstrations and much, much more! Six barns in all." (attractions info from the old website most of this stuff is gone now). We did some exploring and shooting around the trains in the front than we found an old house ( locked and boarded up tight, as u know we never ever break windows or doors with respect the property so we didn’t get to see much of that) there was a barn like garage attached slowly collapsing in on itself from heavy water damage doors wide open inviting us in as well as all the local small creatures. I found later in my reading online that the cause of the closure was from a bad snow storm that made the roof collapse destroying several of the vintage treasures and repairs would of been too costly, the older couple that ran the museum and who I am guessing that they also lived on the property at least part time (from peaking through the only dusty window without a board, the house attached looked very much like a elderly couples home) had to shut it down and salvaged what they could of the antiques to be re-homed at other local museums and libraries. Inside the old garage were some real treasures though, there were a ton of old Christmas decorations scattered around we found a wheel chair and the best creepy old doll as you can see from our photo shoot, some really funky looking mannequin parts in boxes heads included, there was an old tractor vehicle parked near what used to be a display inside, and the coolest thing in my opinion there were old Polaroid photos pinned to the wall that were taken in that very barn of children meeting Santa, it was really awesome to see that somehow those old photos were still hanging on. We shot a few things there and continued around the trail to check out some of what was left of the old rusty vehicles and train cars, which you can also see in the more galleries page, it was fun to take a little step back into the 90s and ealy 2000s when the team and I were all little kids who would of loved this exhibit. It seems like a lot of Families made the drive out here to see the trains and cars all decorated with colorful Christmas lights and well worth it if you ask me. All in all this trip was bit easier than most, there was no nosy neighbors , no rivers to jump in or holes to crawl through but sometimes a low key adventure is a really nice change of pace, it gives us the time to be a bit more creative with out shoots, and we all had a good time reminiscing about Christmas as kids. Be sure to check out all the photos on the more galleries page and stay tuned for the video coming soon to youtube over at The Need For Exploration!

IG: @Chaotiqephoto @the_need_for_exploration @xurbanxxamberx

found image from old news article