Railfan Tour of Paraguay - Sapucay (or where is the man with the key?)

The railway name painted on the tender of a steam locomotive.

I first visited Paraguay in 1984 as a member of a Canadian Government delegation trying to interest the railway in developments in Canadian railway technology (we also visited Uruguay and Argentina on the same trip). I was there to extol the virtues of the Canadian grain transport system (this was before my time in railway safety). We spent the first morning with the general manager of the railway. His team were not too interested in 100 car trains of grain bearing in mind that his railway was one hundred percent operated by ancient steam locomotives.  I subsequently visited Paraguay on a couple of fan trips in the 1990s. Railway operation in Paraguay ceased around the year 2000. It was 100 percent steam operated until the end.

The afternoon of our first day was taken up with a trip to the locomotive works at Sapucay (or Sapucai) which was located around 100 km east of Asuncion the capital. As our minivan went further out the sky clouded over and it began to rail.

Our driver had a little difficulty in finding Sapucay because it was off the dirt road and access was via a dirt track

It was the country's main railway workshop but there was nothing moving.  A little different from Swindon or Crewe.

The whole place resembled a soggy junk yard

A carload of firewood.  The locomotives were all fired with hardwood.

We  eventually found the works management team who had lunch planned for us.  We had to politely decline because the railway had already hosted a lunch for us in Asuncion.  We went straight into the works.

There were a number of locomotives spread around the yard

Wood fired steam provided the basic power in the shop

All the shop power was provided by belts. I wondered how many have been caught by the belts  in this 19th century shop

This is the foundry.  We were told that coconut husks provided a greater heat than hardwood.

Wandering around it was hard to believe what I was seeing. Men were welding without any kind of face protection wearing flip flops on a mud floor.  It was now raining hard and the roof was leaking badly. 

It is difficult to believe they had stripped down this steam locomotive and were rebuilding it.

As the rain on the tin roof became heavier I realized that I had still not seen anything moving in Sapucay. Then I heard a soggy whooshing noise.

I rushed to a side door, peeked out and this is what I saw

With water gushing out of the left hand injector overflow this steam dinosaur went past.

No 286 was the only operating steam locomotive I saw that day. We went back to the minivan for the trip back to Asuncion.

However the exit from Sapucay was barred.  

It turns out that the roads become impassable during heavy rains and there are barriers placed and locked across the roads. We asked where is the key to the lock.  Turns out the man with the key just disappears when he has to lock the gates. He probably won't show up until tomorrow morning.

We sat in our marooned minivan for over an hour. It began to get hot and we were beginning to get hungry.

The rain was so heavy that it took a long time for me and our guide to run across the street to this store. The leather hat is a great souvenir of this day.

Our guide was convinced that we would be here all night and had made arrangements to sleep with the little boy's mother. I asked:

"What about her husband?"

"He's in Asuncion, if I cannot get out he cannot get in."

In the end we were saved by a hydro repair crew.  They arrived in a truck and found the gate was locked. Out quickly came their shovels and in no time one of the posts had been removed. Their truck and our minivan went through and the post was neatly replaced.  It was a hair-raising trip back, in parts through waters almost a foot deep. Turns out they had not had any rain in Asuncion.