Vale do Peso Alto Alentejo Portugal 9th March 2014

The beautiful little station at Vale do Peso station is on the closed Cáceres branch line from Torre das Vargens to Castelo de Vide, opened in 1880, which used to run over the Marvão-Beirã border into Spain. It is covered in exquisite blue & white tiled scenes of the region which fortunately have not been vandalised. The regional trains service on the Cáceres branch line ended on February 1, 2011.

The station is frozen in time with everything still in place; track, signals, points, goods shed, loading gauge, water tank and clearly hasn't been disused for too long. The photo was taken from the "new" goods loading yard which according to the stone plaque was inaugurated by the "Camara Municipal do Crato" on 7th May 1993. I guess the optimism of the 1990s was misplaced and the crisis of 2008 badly hit the region.

I would like to believe it will open again someday.