Fond de Gras, Luxembourg · 2026
The Railyard
Series · 04 frames
The Lok Werkstatt at Fond de Gras — a seam of heritage iron held open in the canopy, read from straight above to far overhead.
Aerial photographs of the Fond-de-Gras heritage railway yard in the Minett region of southern Luxembourg. The Lok Werkstatt — the preserved locomotive workshop at the heart of the yard — sits inside the Alzette-Minett UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, surrounded by recovering forest that has been closing the margins since the last iron ore mine closed in 1981. Shot in June 2026 at 60–80 metres altitude with a DJI Mini 5 Pro.
The Prince Henri Railway reached Fond-de-Gras in 1874 to haul minette ore from the surrounding pits. The ore's high phosphorus content made it commercially useless until the Gilchrist-Thomas process solved the problem in 1878; within a generation, Luxembourg had become one of Europe's most productive steel regions. What remains at Fond-de-Gras today is a thin seam of heritage infrastructure inside a recovering ecosystem — and the only record of it from above is the one the drone makes.
