Wild Horses in the Desert

Abandoned old train station.

Abandoned railroad station, due to the rapidly shifting sand dunes covering the old tracks.

Abandoned rail track, because of the rapidly shifting sand dunes.

Rapidly moving sand dunes, covers the new track.

Kollmanskuppe - Ghost Town

Kollmanskuppe was built 1908, when the Germans discovered diamonds. When the diamond fields ran dry, the town was deserted in 1954 and is now slowly being overwhelmed by the desert.

Driven by the enormous wealth of the first diamond miners, the residents built the village in the architectural style of a German town, with amenities and institutions including a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, skittle-alley, theatre and sport-hall, casino, ice factory and the first x-ray-station in the southern hemisphere, as well as the first tram in Africa. It had a railway link to Lüderitz.

Now, it is all open to the desert.