Ecuadorean Railways: Part 3 - Quito to San Lorenzo

Today we are going to get into the nitty gritty by having a look at the San Lorenzo line; known formerly as the Northern Subdivision and completed during the late 1950s or early 1960s, it runs from Quito and heads more or less north to San Lorenzo, a planned site of an alternative port that I understand has never been fully developed as such. The other port linked by rail of course being Guayaquil, but the limitations of the G&Q working against efficient freight movement inward, the alternative port was rather keenly sought. San Lorenzo never achieved this, and so today the port has been developed at Manta further south and now a new line estimated (early 2000s?) at some $60 million may well be built in future.

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In the map you can see the G&Q coming in from the south to Quito and the Q&S heading north out of the capital. We have Panoramio to show us some features of the line and I will highlight some of Senôr H Casanova’s pictures (maybe he is the local train spotter who has walked or cycled over much of the route to San Lorenzo). Also there is not full mapping of this line because at the point at the northern end of Google Earth’s current coverage, there is not anything in Google Maps to show where the line went after that.

Looking at the map to begin with shows us that this is very much a contour railway that was constructed to the cheapest possible cost. It covers many ravines and considering that it was started possibly in the same era as our NIMT was completed, that a completely different scenario was used to cross that landscape is rather striking. In the part that I could examine, something up to two dozen crossings were affected by more or less similar means: a long steep approach in both directions to a tight horseshoe curve at the narrowest point of the ravine where it could be crossed at a relatively low level on an earth embankment with presumably a culvert at the bottom to carry the water, or in some cases a bridge. In New Zealand this is more commonly a feature of roads than railways, because the railway needs to be kept straight and as level as possible to enable it to carry high freight volumes. I don’t really have off the top of my head an adequate comparison for any branch line in NZ but I can’t think of any real equivalent that comes to mind. all the ones that I can think of are roads like the highways near some of our highest railway viaducts that do exactly that. The problem with this approach is the tight curve that you need at the relatively narrow crossing, however in Ecuador such curvature is comparatively routine. The result of these and other decisions is a line that basically zigzags its way across a comparatively flat landscape with only a few hills to begin with. This means of construction has proved to be a fatal flaw as the river valleys are best avoided due to the rainflow, it’s understandable that where most of the damage has been occurring is in those areas and the way to producing a line that could stay open is to stay out of those river valleys and bridge across at the top.

The next question which has not been fully resolved is when the line was abandoned, or at least part of it was; to the north there are still a couple of sections that have operated, at least recently, including Ibarra-Primer Paso (not on this map). What you can see in Casanova’s photos suggests closure or abandonment for a significant period. It’s known that the most severe weather bombs happened in the early 80s and late 90s yet much of the damage of the earlier period was repaired. I believe that it was 1997/98 period of heavy rainfall in particular that has largely been left unrepaired until now and the cessation of through services has allowed the line to quickly show neglect and abandonment.

Here I am going to list some of Casanova’s photos that you can go look at with a commentary (text only, Panoramio does not have a linking API as yet). Some of the photos in this list are also from other authors.

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/39969154	A bridge over a highway with missing rails
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/11700988	A bad washout, rails hanging midair
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/31055035	The right of way being used as the entrance to someone’s premises
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/31079033	A bridge at the side of a ravine
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/31079054	A ravine low bridge crossing
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/31079135	Tunnel
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/31080018	Looking down to the bottom of the ravine we just crossed and have climbed out of
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/31080198	Where’s the track?
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/31080119	Crossing a ravine using the shortest possible bridge
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/34231953	Another bit that looks more like a rubber tyred road, fairly steep too.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/30981141	Ditto
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/31020076	Looking across a ravine to a tunnel on the far side.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/31000915	Bridge with tunnel at far end
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/34261426	View of a typical ravine crossing with a bridge in this case.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/37519702	Another such crossing, this one must have been a high embankment that has washed out.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/37520860	Tunnel to nowhere… almost
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/37520941	Some trackbed that gives an idea of the line’s problems
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/7201543	An actual train near Otavalo. These guys are a bit more formal about riding on the roof.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/997396	Otavalo
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/997323	And now for something related not railway…
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/14317771	A high bridge near Ibarra
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/14317798	A local train near Ibarra
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17577646	View of that bridge from a train
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/36288063	Stone arch bridge near Ibarra
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/37519602	Washout
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/31008451	Bad washout with rails in midair
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/13694966	This is the very simple autoferro turntable at Salinas (Primer Paso) where they turn the railbus at the end of its run.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/36508296	Salinas
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/13695062	An improvised panorama of the Salinas railway station

Browse the map to see some of the geographic features like a 3 chain curve near Quito, I’ve run out of time so that’s it for today.

I am just coming back to this a couple of days later to comment further on the current operation. Some photos from Flickr are linked below (Flickr allows this). Ibarra-Salinas (Primer Paso) is the remaining 43 km that is open at the moment for tourists. I guess we will see whether any more is fixed up by the government. There are several different railbuses operating the route. It is very obviously geared around that minimalist operation and this is a somewhat sad reflection of how railways have been run down in Ecuador – fortunately I will be able to be more positive about G&Q when I get to writing about that. This means there is a workshop in Ibarra that is just full of old stored rolling stock, locomotives etc that is rusting away to oblivion.

I found one complete photo album on Flickr that has a whole trip worth of photos. That day there weren’t many people who wanted to travel so they went along for the ride with a repair gang in a very small railcar: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9874810@N02/sets/72157601593391119/with/1196701862/

The rest of the photos below are taken from various Flickr albums including some from the album mentioned above.

A bridge in the operational Ibarra-Salinas section with a railbus.

From other photos this appears to be the Salinas station.

A work gang installing some “sleepers” or “ties” (they had run out of the regular kind so they were using the trunks of small trees).

The workshop at Ibarra with the small railcar they were using that day.

I have seen some photos that I can’t link that showed sleepers being unloaded at this workshop – dated about a year ago. The text seemed to suggest they would be put into rehabilitating this section. But what about the rest?

This is from a different album and it shows a different railbus as they are going into a tunnel.

Ecuadorean Railways: Part 2 – Introduction (continued)

Continuing from part 1 and after reading up a lot more. The G&Q railroad and possibly the S&C (Sibambe-Cuenca) started life as a private company. The operation of the G&Q has always been complicated by the climate in Ecuador which has often produced heavy rainfall to damage the lines with landslides or washouts. So it was that in 1925 the privately owned railroad company was sold to the Ecuadorian government because, it would seem, they didn’t want to repair the line any more. The climatic problems in fact caused a change in the route of the railway in the first place, the change that resulted in the obstacle of Nariz Del Diablo being encountered with its challenges. I wonder if there is still any trace today of this earlier constructive work of the railway. At any rate, much of the development was done in the private railroad era, and after that it was mostly downhill. The finances of the railway, so I read, were not good except in the 1920s and again during World War II. The main headquarters were developed in Huigra and the workshops in Riobamba, and these still exist in some form today. Efforts have been made to dieselise in stages over the recent decades, but steam still exists as no money could be found to buy spares for the modern locomotives.

A diagram showing the distances, altitudes and gradients is here. I didn’t include it in the post as I suspect the copyright belongs to the website that is displaying it.

Now it is time to finish off with a map… of course, what else do we put on every page in this blog?

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The coverage of Ecuador in Google Earth has improved quite a lot since I first mapped this line three years ago, but of course there are still gaps, the gap sections are shown in green and are for the most part a direct trace from Google Maps. And then there is a part of the San Lorenzo line that is not actually marked in Google Maps at all. We will go into the map in more detail in subsequent articles of the series.

Ecuadorean Railways: Part 1 – Introduction

Well you know, on this blog we go lots of different places and cover a wide range of subjects. In this series we are going to look at the railways in Ecuador and there are going to be a few parts because there is a lot that is of interest. A brief history to begin with. The fullest extent of the Ecuadorean Railways is about 1000 km of which about half is in the legendary Guayaquil-Quito line, the “G & Q”. The other lines which have been developed are Sibambe-Cuenca and Quito-San Lorenzo. The role of the railway in modern day Ecuador is not very clear. When you look at what has been in the past and what is now, it seems the railway was developed for full service in the past but now is mainly passenger, light freight and tourism. The biggest obstacle the railways have is the topology and the difficulties in overcoming it. The G&Q line has to climb from sea level (4 metres) at Guayaquil to 3229 metres at Palmira in only 166 km. Palmira is not the highest part of the line but it does represent in theory an unbroken ascent, after Palmira the line does drop a bit before it climbs again. Do the maths and you come up with an average gradient of 1 in 50. Let’s revise that a little and split the line into two parts. From Guayaquil to Bucay the track distance is 87 km and the ascent is 290 metres with average grade of 1 in 300 therefore. From Bucay to Palmira the track distance is 79 km and the ascent is 2935 metres, giving an average grade over that section of just 1 in 26. The steepest sections in that are 1 in 18 and this is an adhesion worked railway, it has no rack or any other aids to help the climb up. Effectively such steep grades over such a long section of the railway limits the practical size of any train and therefore its carrying capacity.

Construction on the G&Q line began in 1872 and with the many obstacles to be overcome especially the switchback at Nariz Del Diablo, between Sibambe and Alausi, which contains the steepest 1 in 18 sections, and which had to be blasted out of solid rock resulting in hundreds of deaths, it took until 1908 before the complete line was opened. The other two lines were completed in the middle of the 20th century: Cuenca was opened in 1965 having taken 50 years to build 145 km, while San Lorenzo was opened in either 1957  or 1962 (unsure when it started). The railways of Ecuador played their fair part in the development of the country in the earlier years but like many other countries have been run down in the second half of the 20th century. Although I can’t find full information on the web I understand that the Cuenca line is effectively closed and has been at least partly closed since the 1970s. The San Lorenzo line is partly closed but may be reopened. The G&Q is partly closed at present but is expected to be fully reopened. The main factors affecting the operation of the railways in recent decades have been financial problems, the development of the roads with transfer of traffic, and lack of maintenance. Some parts are currently closed because of landslides and washouts that have not been able to be repaired, and historically the line has been renowned for its reputation for frequent derailments and the operation of very old locomotives and rolling stock.

Now in the 21st century the value of the lines for tourist development has been recognised, I read somewhere that the railway was one of the top 5 attractions in Ecuador and there are a number of companies that specifically organise and run rail tours in the country. The government has borrowed money from Venezuela and has in the last few years started a large rehabilitation program on the G&Q line and on parts of the San Lorenzo line. They have their own website in Spanish and English and are making use of Flickr and Youtube to promote the works they are doing. I’ll finish off this article with a couple of Youtube clips. Here is one off the the official Youtube channel of Ecuadorean Railways that shows the track being reconstructed at Nariz Del Diablo, the zigzag section where the line climbs up the side of a mountain. (Please note it is Spanish language)

The second clip is a ride on a railcar from Alausi to Sibambe and return. From Sibambe at 1836 metres altitude and 131 km line distance to Alausi (2347 metres, 142 km) an average gradient of 1 in 21 is needed. In order to achieve this climb, the line firstly ascends the switchback at Nariz Del Diablo which involves three sections of track in total, with two dead end sections with points. The train heads up the first part, reverses up the middle part and then heads up again into the third section. The second part of the ascent involves a sweeping ascent of a cliff face with two horseshoe curves. The maximum grade on these sections is 1 in 18. The clip is also in theory Spanish language although there is almost no dialogue so it’s not really an issue. They started with the railbus at Alausi, went down to the bottom and came back up again.