Trainspotting in Tbilisi, Georgia

I have never cared for means of transport. I have never been car, motorbike, plane, or train person. By no means have I suddenly picked up a new hobby in photographing any of these things, but yesterday my random adventures led to me roaming around by the side of the rail by the train station of Tbilisi, searching for the signs of the city's old Soviet industry. My intent was to photograph and video the industrialism that was in the location, after all this was a prime location for factories and to import and export the goods within them to the various regions of the USSR. This was a bit of a weird adventure for me, to roam the rail, weave between the scattered debris of all sorts of trash that was found by its side. People joined with the tracks as they navigated from one side to the next. This was a weird thing to me, though it didn't seem all that active and trains didn't really speed through the area when they did come. My agenda was to find a way to take off with my drone and land safely, without interfering with anything remotely close to the train station, its infrastructure, as well as the pop-up markets in the surrounding area. This was a great difficulty given how packed the area was. So much life still remains in this small area.

I found myself walking along the overgrown sides of the station. Nothing here was kept in good shape. Everything was growing, cracked, or littered to no end. It was teeming with poverty. After all, this is Tbilisi's main train station, to which it was built in the Soviet Union and I assume last maintained around that same time period based on the visuals. To put things into perspective, all of the trains I saw during my time there were also built during the Soviet Union. Old blocky things that were absolutely massive. The ground shook as they passed, the vibrations pumping into the Earth. Horns blasting as they warn the passer's by that they're slowly approaching. It still felt strange to me that you could walk across the rail here, even the signs that stated no entry were full of people entering and exiting, using the entire area as a way to get a shortcut into the other side of the city. Funnily, just a short walk down was an overpass that carries you over the rail safely. That said, it's just as decayed as everything else and probably less safe than just walking over the tracks.

I spent quite a while in this area. I watched as a few trains would pass by, some carried aspects of industry. Mostly gas or rock. The smell of rustic metals as they passed. Drivers either half asleep or passing through with a quick nod in my direction. I hadn't been this close to a train like this before, and while I've never really photographed anything like this before, I felt the need to do so. My curiosity had me wanting to capture the details, the old and vintage look. The atmosphere here was one of isolation. Quiet, mostly forgotten. The surrounding was coated in bits of wood that once held up market stalls where people would've once sold various goods to the many travelling individuals that would come and go from the station. These days, there were no people. Nothing. Signs of a former attempt at life. A single dog was in the area, sleeping on one of the stalls. I kept my distance but snapped a photograph anyway. Fortunately, I was using my Sony 85mm F1.8 lens for these, slightly cropped because of the sensor on the A6000, giving it an even tighter focal length.  It felt like I was the only one really noticing the surroundings here, a lone roamer that would stumble across a lost civilisation.

It didn't feel all that safe here. The threat of stray dogs. The trains passing by with such close proximity. The smell of whatever was being transported which filled the lung. The trash littered all over and the high chance of homeless people and certainly drug abuse in the area. I had seen a few shifty faces here and there, ones that would disappear through the cracks and into the factories which were abandoned in the area. I would've loved to have explored them, but being alone I knew it wouldn't be the best idea to pursue. Instead I decided to stick around in the more open areas, to which I found myself roaming through different streets and witnessing the history within them.

Incredibly old buildings surrounded. Their textures peeling off, overgrown as always. The old Russian text would remain in a faded nature, a little hard to read though sometimes you could make out the general idea of what its general purpose would've been. This old building hadn't seen care in decades, and I gathered the assumption that it was once used to maintain parts of trains inside. Old Georgian homes mixed with the Soviet architecture surrounded the railway, an odd sight to see. Splintered wooden walls with old pillared beautiful European styled architecture that was starting to crumble. I though of how this area would've once looked. The beauty of it, the industrial might the area once held. That importance it had on the community here. And now the total neglect and lack of acknowledgement for it all. The towers of the factories nearby had been repurposed with 5G telecommunications equipment sitting at their top. That was a sight to see. I flew my drone around it and took a few videos. Though that took another large adventure to get to, I'll write about that adventure in another post. The people that lived in this area seemed to have been there forever, generations that had held close to the few things they had. Homes definitely passed down and altered over the years by themselves.

It was a bit of a somber feeling to walk through this area. Scraps of metal had been taken and repurposed in all ways. The homes with fences built out of whatever they could find. Locals would sit by the road, some of which would just stare at me like I was some strange being that had just landed in the area and began to roam around with great curiosity. To some degree, that was true. I was curious, I was deeply fascinated, and I wanted to really discover that history, to find new stories of the past.

I turned back after this. The nearby factories were all too enticing but the threats outweighed my curiosity. I walked through the yard where many old trains were being kept and worked on. Huge towers remained, but my focal length was just too tight to really capture them in their glory, cutting out of frame. The tall pines of Tbilisi were still present here. Stray cats would sleep all over the yard. And locals would walk through with their bags full of various goods obtained from the nearby markets. Some of which would pay attention to me again with the camera, some showed clear appreciation in that someone found interest in the area and its past. Something I think they don't see all that often, particularly given the area and the lack of Soviet appreciation in the nation these days. I mentioned before that I was in the area actually to shoot things with the drone, not the main camera. I had intent on capturing industrialism for my portfolio from above. I ended up taking more shots with the camera than I did my drone here. But I couldn't help it, I just wanted to capture the strange feeling that was felt here. 

I continued to snap a few shots of the surroundings here. Wanting to walk deeper into the yard but noticing workers and not wanting to attract bad attention. My eyes had already noticed some other factories down the line that I wanted to photograph. I crossed the rail again and went on my way, walking along it and seeing the decay continue. Stations of debris, former buildings for people to wait had been turned into homes from others. Though much of this space was just used to pollute with various trash. An old man and a small dog weirdly stayed comfortable in a shack. No idea what that was all about, but he seemed to be working despite turning the shack more into a home than a place of work.

This was one of the weirdest places I had been to so far in Tbilisi. It spoke of its deep history, so much of it was just ignored, left to rot. And with all the development that is taking place in the city, I suspect that much of it lives on borrowed time. Where soon the city will demolish a lot of it and build something new in the space. For it currently all just sits there, idle, ignored and decaying rapidly as the years go by. The train station itself still active, but with one or two commuter trains every few hours it seemed. And these trains that sit within the yard are likely to go next, though the sheer cost of doing so would put that idea aside for a few years I'm sure. This whole area was so dated that I feel the only way to really fix it would be to start from scratch, and nobody wants to pretend they have the funds for that. After all, Tbilisi still runs on its past. As much as it dislikes that past, it's the very thing that keeps the nation's last legs upright. And it shows greatly. And here's one last rustic train to end the post. A little bit of trainspotting in the decaying city of Tbilisi.