Our friends with the Adirondack Scenic RR and the East Broad Top RR will be able to relate to this article, from yesterday’s - June 7, 2010 - Wall Street Journal. (I hope this links works to access the ‘full-text’ version - otherwise, you may have to ‘search’ for it.)
Argentines Engage in a Labor of Love on a Railroad to Nowhere
Volunteers Fight Weeds, Wasps and Highways in Hopes a Train Will Come Back, Someday
By Matt Moffett - June 7, 2010 - Page One
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604575282603956923886.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Paul: I made mention of this WSJ article in my post under “Preservation” yesterday, and though I note that there are more than fifty views, no viewer has either seen my post to reply, or could care less.
Are you (or anyone else) able to answer my questions re: City of NO or Panama Limited and also Wrecker No. X89 that I raised in my prior reply to you yesterday in the General Discussion thread entitled “Illinois Central”? Thanks in advance. (You could answer to this latter subject questions back on the “Illinois Central” thread, if you could.)
If the name is an omen, they’re sunk. On the other hand, it seems that half of everything in Argentina is called General Belgrano.
I was in B. Aires in early March. I noticed immediately that the harbour district has tracks of dual gauge running through much of it, but it doesn’t appear to be used much, if at all. Never did see or hear a train, although we were there for only 24 hours.
-Crandell
Is that true that the General Belgrano branch line is 8,000 miles long? The article says the volunteers are restoring 100 miles of it. Clearing away the brush and replacing some missing rails is one thing, but I wonder if it needs 100 miles of new ties in order to run trains.
In Ecuador, the government wants to restore the G&Q Railroad, which is 288 miles long, but even with the power of government, it seems hopeless. That railroad sort of fell apart in the 1990s with a bunch of landslides and washouts. Operation was broken and partially curtailed. And once that happened, the whole line went downhill really fast. A lot of the rail was stolen for scrap. Now the government wants to restore it because it values the line a symbol of national pride, but it seems like an impossible dream.
When it was operating, it seemed
As soon as I read that, the light dawned. I’ve since checked and yes - General Belgrano is the name of the Argentinian Navy cruiser (formerly the USN’s Phoenix) that was sunk by a British submarine in April 1982, during the early days of the Falklands Islands/ Malvinas War, with a loss of about 323 = about 1/4 of the crew.
The General Belgrano Railroad was not a single branch, but the most extensive sub-system of the Argentinian railroad network - 8,500 miles of a meter-gauge system. The book that I referenced earlier is a ‘coffee-table’ photo-type book, The Love of TRAINS - Steam and Diesel Locomotives in Action Around the World, by Victor Hand and Harold Edmonson, 1974 by Octopus Books Ltd., London, ISBN 0-7064-03304, Crescent Books/ Crown Publishers Inc. New York, NY in the US, Iin the chapter ANDEAN SPECTACULAR - The Belgrano Railway in Northern Argentina, pp. 40 - 44. The photos are of 2-10-2’s by both Baldwin and Skoda climbing one of the two ‘high desert’ lines to the Chilean border, which rises from about 4,500 ft. to 14,000 ft. in 80 rail miles - ‘‘it makes Sherman Hill look like a child’s sand pile’’, as the authors put it. But that line has little in common with the one whose restoration is described in this week’s Wall Street Journal article, save name and gauge.
Maybe these “amigos” should contact KCS of Mexico and see if they would buy and restore it giving them the full operation of it and extending KSC 's South American operation ? Just a thot …