Near the Armenian–Iranian border stands a beautiful, abandoned train station

It was already getting dark when we reached this abandoned train station, and the atmosphere left a deep impression on me. Standing there, the iconic statue of a young girl caught my eye—her graceful hand gesture, once holding a pigeon, now seemed to highlight the eerie beauty of this forgotten place. In this article, you’ll discover the history, development, and decline of this remarkable site. Highly recommended for urbex photographers and history enthusiasts visiting Armenia.

The Meghri–Nakhichevan railway line, including the Meghri station, was launched in the autumn of 1943, during World War II. It was built to support industrial freight transport and to connect southern parts of Armenia with the wider Soviet rail network.

At the time, the railway offered the only practical alternative to the long and difficult highway between Yerevan and Meghri.

The Yerevan–Baku railway began in Yerevan, passed through Nakhichevan, Meghri, and Kapan, and continued to Baku, with approximately 40 kilometers of the line running along Armenia’s southern border near Iran. This railway served as a crucial link between Yerevan, the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan, and Baku.

(Historically, Nakhichevan was part of Armenia until 1921, when it was transferred to Azerbaijan by the Bolsheviks. On March 16, 1921, Soviet Russia and Turkey signed the Treaty of Moscow, placing Nakhichevan under the “protectorate” of Soviet Azerbaijan. Before that, it had been part of the First Republic of Armenia.)

In the 1960s, a new station building was constructed in Meghri. Later, in the 1970s, Azerbaijani authorities planned to install a bust of Mashadi Azizbekov, an Azerbaijani Bolshevik and one of the Baku Commissars. However, one night, a bust of Stepan Shahumyan, a prominent Armenian revolutionary, mysteriously appeared in its place — secretly relocated from the Agarak mining combine. The bust remained in place until 1993, when it was damaged by vandals. It lay discarded beneath its pedestal for almost 3 decades before ultimately disappearing in recent years.

In the station’s final years of operation, 20 to 23 trains, each with more than 50 wagons, passed through Meghri daily in both directions.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the outbreak of the Artsakh liberation war, freight wagons loaded in Meghri and routed through Nakhichevan no longer reached Yerevan. As a result, the operation of the station was inevitably suspended, and the last train passed through Meghri on the night of April 23, 1992.

By 2003, the railway section from Kapan to Meghri had been dismantled, and approximately 70 wagons and rails were scrapped.

Today, what remains is a quiet, nostalgic scene: the cozy station building, a few rusting carriages, the empty pedestal where Shahumyan's bust once stood, and a statue of a young girl — her graceful pose as if pointing toward the silent echoes of a once-vibrant station.