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s15e12 · 2026-02-11
Running · GB
Abandoned Engineering
U&Yesterday Documentary
What it is
As the saying goes – they probably seemed like good ideas at the time. The world is peppered with examples of incredible engineering projects and buildings designed to make life easier for those that used them, amaze those that came to see them, and make money for those that ordered, designed and built them. They were the stuff of dreams. Often enormous engineering problems had to be resolved, obstacles overcome and new innovations employed just to get them built in the first place. Alas, a great number of these remarkable structures have now been abandoned, cast aside like enormous expensive out-of-date toys, never to be used in the ways for which they were intended. Each and every one of these extraordinary places is home to a wealth of powerful and compelling stories. We'll see and hear about some of the most spectacular examples of abandoned engineering the world has eve...
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12 this season · 145 totals04e01 The World's Strangest Ghost Town 2019-06-27 19:00
The World's Strangest Ghost Town
A settlement in Argentina destroyed by floods, a town in the US that has been erased, and a Soviet dream-town that turned into a nuclear nightmare.
s04e02 Palace of Death 2019-07-04 19:00
Palace of Death
A seemingly endless concrete line stretching through the French countryside, which sits as a monument to a discarded engineering advancement.
s04e03 Guernsey Nazi Towers 2019-07-11 19:00
Guernsey Nazi Towers
A little-known dark past explains the vast monolithic structures that dominate the small British island of Guernsey.
s04e04 Bodie USA 2019-07-18 19:00
s04e05 Tunnel to the Underworld 2019-07-25 19:00
Tunnel to the Underworld
A ghostly town in West Virginia that fell victim to the pace of change when steam trains were rendered obsolete. A colossal dry dock structure on the American west coast may now be crumbling but has written itself into military folklore. An elaborate underground complex in Italy that had been abandoned for nearly 2000 years, continues to mystify explorers today. And an island paradise in Costa Rica hiding a grim history of violence within an old, abandoned prison. But how and why were they ever built at all, and why are they now left abandoned?
s04e06 Escobar's Ruin 2019-08-01 19:00
Escobar's Ruin
Features a ruined compound in Colombia which was once home to Pablo Escobar and alien-looking structures with no apparent purpose, isolated in an empty English marshland in Denge, near Dungeness in Kent. But how and why were they ever built at all, and why are they now left abandoned?
s04e07 Villa De Vecchi Rhodes 2019-10-24 19:00
Villa De Vecchi Rhodes
A formerly luxurious and strategic mountain-top villa on the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean that's been ravaged by acts of revenge by locals since 1955. A structure covered in symbols and signs that spirals down into the depths of the unknown. The rust covered carcass of a vast industrial relic deep in the woods of West Virginia, and lone towers battling the might of the ocean at the ends of the earth. But how and why were they ever built, and why are they now left abandoned?
s04e08 Pyramiden Norway 2019-10-31 21:00
Pyramiden Norway
A strange-looking deserted town with an almost supernatural atmosphere on a remote Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean was in fact an ambitious Soviet mining outpost with a tragic history. Also, a collection of imposing buildings on the southern tip of Australia, the remains of curious-looking basins emerging from the waves in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge and the ruins of a monumental construction project in southern Germany that was a ruthless regime's deadly prototype.
s04e09 Behind the Berlin Wall 2019-11-07 21:00
s04e10 Bannack USA 2019-11-14 21:00
Bannack USA
A sprawling Wild West ghost town sits peaceful and abandoned in Montana, USA, but is still haunted by tales of murder, corruption and buried treasure. Also, a cold, dark, underground mountain network that cost the lives of thousands... the crumbling ruins of an English industry that turned poison into profit... a peaceful village that was shattered by the terrors of war.
s04e11 Buckner Building Alaska 2019-11-21 21:00
Buckner Building Alaska
A vast snowcovered monster in the icy wilderness of southern Alaska, a ruined super structure that overshadows everything around it in and a landscape of confusing and surprising structures that once represented a bold statement of Spain's plans for the future. Plus, a long, winding formation that was once supposed to help defend Hitler's Third Reich. And in Budapest, Hungary, the stripped skeleton of an industrial relic lies rusting away.
s04e12 1936 Olympic Village Berlin 2019-11-28 21:00
1936 Olympic Village Berlin
A ghostly house in a tropical paradise that's still feared by the locals... a pioneering complex marked by both glory and tragedy that's soon to be lost forever... a shipping juggernaut that met a dramatic end in the violent waters off South Africa... and towering remains from an industrial age.