Fuselage cubicles – Heathrow UK
Underground - New Zealand
Coffins - Germany
Huge dog shaped building - Idaho, USA
Capsules - Japan
Sand Castles - Dorset, UK
Caves - Turkey
Rain Forest - Brazil
Drainage Pipes - Austria
Under water - Florida, USA
http://www.news.com.au/travel/galleries/gallery-e6frflw0-1225863747274
Well-Being Australia chairman Mark Tronson, a former locomotive engineman and now Footplate Padre, comments that although these are all uniquely wonderful and attractive to tourists, Christians have already done this type of thing.
For example, in the early seventies, Ken Swan a senior railway engineer on the New South Wales Government Railways, upon his retirement negotiated a number of disused compartment railway carriages.
Ken and Elizabeth Swan were establishing the Christian Landmark Camp on the central coast of NSW with a railway theme. The carriages were railed to Gosford, where they were put on a truck and transported to the hinterland camp site.
Here they were craned onto specially designed settings and engineered to supply water and electricity. Each compartment was made into a comfortable room with seats that were became fold-down beds. It became a very popular retreat facility.
Visitors can find railway signals, old railway platform seats, level crossing gates, points levers and whatever else Ken Swan could get his hands on. There is railway memorabilia from the moment one enters the gates into the Landmark.
Over the decades schools from Sydney, the Central Coast and Newcastle schedule camps at the Landmark; and on the weekends youth groups, churches and a host of others book into the venue, and months in advance.
Mark Tronson and his wife Delma visited the Landmark as a guest of Ken and Elizabeth Swan in 1994 at the time it was being passed on to their son to run and develop further. They slept in one of the carriage compartments; it was an adventure, it was fun, and it bought back plenty of memories for an ex locomotive engineman.
Yes, sand castle hotels, underground hotels, rain forest hotels, cave hotels and the rest of them may be wonderful and majestic, but nothing like the Landmark Railway camp site brings the same nostalgia to the Footplate Padre.