Virtual Railfan Tour of Ecuador - Last day in 1988 - Quito and Bust

 

Our special train at Tikan

A landslide had severed the line north of Alausi so we had to use the highway to take us across the gap.  There were no operative steam locomotives in the north so we had this diesel for our train.

There was a stop at Riobamba

No. 10 was on display at Riobamba

We picked up some head end vans at Riobamba

A run past nearing the summit of the railway

We reached Urbina summit 3,609 meters/11.841 feet above sea level where the locomotive was cut off to switch some cars of cement

Urbina

Switching was carried out using hand signals from the roof.

We were now looking forward to a pleasant descent down to Quito passing through the valley of fire passing several dormant volcanoes including Chimborazo. Mary and I were sitting in the front of the second passenger car enjoying a box lunch.  We were directly above the truck. Suddenly there was a jolt and the car started to bounce up and down. 

I shouted out "Hold on". That was all we could do.

The vertical jolts became more severe until there was a hiss of air as the couplers became disengaged.  I was thankful to look into the corridor and see the rest of the train moving ahead.

We were in a shallow cut and the two parts of the train stayed upright.

One of our group was on the roof with a couple of brakemen.  One of them shouted "Jump." He asked "Which way" and decided to hold on instead.

It was quite obvious that our railway adventure in Ecuador was at an end.

We picked up our bags and trudged a few hundred meters to a road crossing. The tour leader had gone ahead and managed to flag down an empty bus which was returning to Quito.  There was some hard bargaining but the fare of US$1 per head was agreed to.  When he saw that his passengers were gringos the driver raised the fare to US$2 per head.

We had derailed close to a local village.  People came out and spied the splintered wooden ties. Within a short period of time all the wood had been gathered up, pieces carefully knocked on the rails to get rid of the sand and hauled off to be used as firewood.

The derailment

This is the car in which we were sitting when the derailment occurred.