Virtual Railfan Tour of Argentina 1994 - The Old Patagonian Express

 

Bariloche
Half way through my second and last week in Buenos Aires I was asked what I wanted to do for my third weekend.  A number of locations were suggested and I jokingly mentioned El Maiten, headquarters of the Patagonian narrow gauge. Nothing more was said until Friday morning when the inspector who had been with me came up and told me that we would be flying to Bariloche that evening and staying there for two nights. He would rent a car and we would be visiting El Maiten on Saturday although no trains would be running as the line was only running trains on Thursdays. I was stunned - and delighted

Getting from Bariloche to El Maiten took over three hours.  The main highway south was not very good and there was just a dirt track eastwards to El Maiten itself.

My first view of El Maiten.
We quickly found the Superintendent who seemed to be in a hurry to show us around

They made all their castings here - a demonstration of new and worn axle box journals

Although no trains were running one locomotive was in steam. I found out later why.

Almost all of the locomotives supplied were 2-8-0, some Baldwins and some built in Germany.  The exception was four 0-4-0 tanks, one of which survived here

The one engine in steam had a full head of steam.

At the end of the visit I was presented with this makers plate from a Belgian built coach. It now has pride of place in my apartment.
The Superintendent was still in a hurry as it turned out he had made arrangements for a small group of about eight to have lunch at the local restaurant. We sat around the table and the owner produced a massive plate of barbequed beef ribs,  There was nothing else, no fries or, heaven forbid, salad. Just meat.  It was delicious.  I was feeling full when the plate of bones was replaced with a second high piling of beef ribs.
The Superintendent then got up announced it was time to go.  Preparing for a long ride back to Bariloche I got ready to say my goodbyes,  But there was a surprise in store for me.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Wednesday - Zurich Hauptbahnhof Part One

Image
Zurich Hauptbahnhof  Paul has prepared some extensive notes and photos of the Zurich Hauptbahnhof.  This will be in several parts.  The busiest station in Switzerland is Zurich Hauptbahnhof (Zurich HB) which is used primarily by the SBB. It has 26 tracks serving almost 3000 trains daily and it is one of the busiest stations in the world. It was built in the 1870s and is a main shopping destination as well as a transport hub. There are three levels for platforms and the "Shopville" shopping plaza.  The river Sihl river passes right through the station with platforms passing above and below the river. This shows the general layout of the station with the surrounding tram tracks shown in purple Tracks 3 to 18 are terminal tracks located at ground level, served by two side platforms and seven island platforms. These are used by long-distance trains from throughout Switzerland, and by international trains. Tracks 21 and 22 are underground terminal tracks, served by a sing...
Read more

Coming Home - Wrap Up - Sunday 15 Setember 2024

Image
This video, by Noel Wyler,  shows what we have just missed. Last Saturday (14 September) the Oensingen Balsthal  Railway organized an event to commemorate 60 years of the Re 4/4 locomotives. They brought together 24 of them and ran them as one train. Paul and I flew home on KLM from Schiphol Airport. We took a train from Den Haag directly to the airport. The trip back was marred by a couple with a young boy who was obviously teething. He cried almost continuously for the full six hours. I found I could tune him out when I dug deep into the KLM sound system and found a treasure trove of classical music. Bach violin concertos, Mozart piano concerto No. 23, Beethoven symphonies, Schuman etc. We survived the stupidities at the entrance of the Montreal airport and caught the KLM bus back to Ottawa where we arrived precisely on time. A good ending to a wonderful, tremendous, trip  
Read more

Travel Basel to Den Haag - Wednesday 11 September

Image
  A Dutch speciality - pancake with cheese, mushrooms and bacon. This was the only picture I took today - after we had finally arrived at Den Haag. We went early to the station at Basel  to check on our train to Dusseldorf only to find out it had been cancelled. A visit to the SBB ticket office revealed that the train hadn't actually been cancelled but was starting today from Karlsruhe. They found a connecting train leaving a little earlier which we took. This became progressively later and later so that it arrived at Karlsruhe just as the connection was about to pull out. A frantic dash across the platform and we were able to claim our seats. The journey to Dusseldorf was peculiar, There were periods when the train went fast (up to almost 200 kmph) and other periods when it dawdled. It progressively lost time except that it arrived at its final destination, Dusseldorf, eleven minutes early. (An injudicious use of recovery time in the schedule?) Dusseldorf gave us an opportuni...
Read more