My first independent trip abroad was in 1980. With a friend I cycled around Spain. But after all what happened on this trip I am surprised today that I still was so keen on travelling afterwards.
We had come to Madrid on an interrail ticket and after 3 weeks the friend had gone home with the bicycles from Granada. I wanted to make some more good use of the ticket and after a short, adventurous excursion to Morocco I wanted to go to Ponferrada, at the border of Castille y Leon to Galicia in the north of Spain. At that time it was the starting point of one of the last steam operated railway lines in the western part of the world.
A long distance express to Cordoba and railcars to Granada and Algeciras in the station of Bobadilla
After a chaotic arrival on the ferry from Marocco and a night in Algeciras I took the first train in the morning up north to Bobadilla, and from there to Cordoba. Of course there was no internet at the time and my information was limited to a very rough railway map, which showed a line going straight up north from Sevilla via Caceres, Plasencia, Salamanca, Zamora to Astorga, From there it was only a short trip west to Ponferrada. You will not find that route on the map today any more since they have closed down the entire line between Plasencia, Salamanca, Zamora and Astorga (https://www.renfe.com/es/es/viajar/prepara-tu-viaje/atendo/como-solicito-el-servicio/mapa-estaciones-atendo). Probably there was not enough money to built a network of high speed lines and at the same time maintain the service on the minor lines. A development which does not only happen in Spain.
At the time travelling with an interrail ticket was much easier. Today you need reservations on many long distance trains, but then you could just hop on and off.
My map showed that when coming from Cordoba I did not have to go all the way to Sevilla to change for a train up north. I left the west bound train in Los Rosales, a station not far east of Sevilla, where the northern line still branches of today. There I hoped to catch a northbound train, at least as far as Merida, where we had passed through on our bicycle trip just a week before. An historic town with a number of well-preserved Roman ruins, where I would not mind to stay again.
My problem was my budget. It was limited to something around 100 DM for another week of travelling. I counted on sleeping on night trains and buy the odd sandwich from time to time. There were no ATM’s at the time and anyway, I was a student and permanently broke. On the other hand, I was almost without luggage. But what I had was very strange: a sleeping bag, a bottle of Carlos V cognac, a botijo, one of the typical spanish terracotta water bottles, very few clothes to change and my SLR camera. The camera was still functioning, but only in the infinite distance setting. In a little scuffle in Tanger, Marocco, I had hit it on the head of one of the rascals who wanted to steal it.
And indeed soon after my arrival in Los Rosales a north bound train pulled in. I saw the board announcing the destination, Llerena, but had no idea where that place was. The sun was almost setting and so I made myself comfortable in the hope that I could spend most of the night on the train and then change on another train after this one had finally arrived in said Llerena.
So I awoke quite startled when the conductor came to kick me out of the train only two hours later. We had arrived in Llerena, a little town 100 km south of Merida. I found myself in the middle of the night on a deserted platform in the pouring rain. The station was closed and so I made my way into town to find a place to sleep. After wandering around for a while without finding anything I passed a post of the guardia civil. My father was a policeman and therefore it is my conviction that it is the task of the police to help people. I walked into the office and asked in my basic Spanish if they knew a place where I could stay. And indeed, they were helpful and an officer walked with me to a house where somebody had a room with a number of beds where I could sleep for a small contribution. I considered to open the bottle of cognac but eventually I didn’t.
Morning in Llerena, the north-bound express arrives
I slept well besides an interruption by some drunkard who noisily occupied one of the other beds and immediately started to snore. It was still raining when I boarded a stylish railcar going north at about 9.30. The railcar was quite full but I got a seat next to a lovely girl studying in Salamanca. The long hours to Salamanca passed in a wink. You don’t have to have many topics when you have to discuss every word in Spanglish due to mutual misunderstanding. We bought each other a couple of coffee’s from the train bar and when the train finally pulled into Salamanca I was about to ask her to give me a guided tour of the town, which we had visited just a good week before. But I didn’t have a shower in days and my financial situation was so deplorable that I was afraid I wouldn’t even be able to afford to buy her a couple of drinks. I considered the sacrifice of the bottle of cognac. So she left on her own and that was good for her.
Three of the railcars in Salamanca
Because, a while after leaving Salamanca the train stopped somewhere on the track in the middle of nowhere. The stylish railcar had broken down. It took several hours until a Diesel engine slowly appeared from the north and towed us into the next station where they had a short replacement train waiting for us.
The replacement train after the railcar broke down
With several hours of delay we arrived in Astorga. It was dark again but there was still a train west for the one hour trip to Ponferrada. For the third night in a row I arrived in a sleeping town, and for the second night in a row in the pouring rain. A woman had left the train with me and I asked her about a place to stay. Even though it was very late she walked with me into town and waited outside a cheap hotel to see whether there was space for me. When I had settled in my room I considered to open the bottle of cognac but eventually I didn’t.
The collection of unemployed engines in the shed in Ponferrada
Some impressions of the old workshop
One of the spanish broad gage engines of the PV
The PV is a narrow gage railroad which was built to transport coal from the mines in Villablino down the scenic valley of the Sil river to a power station and the main line in Ponferrada. There is a beautiful video on Youtube about the history and future of the railway (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMeE4gJnNx4).
PV had its own station in Ponferrada. It was still raining when I walked there the next morning. But the disappointment was great. There was no action. All the steam engines were standing in the yard, cold. Eventually I found somebody to ask and he told me that there was a strike and therefore no traffic today. Maybe tomorrow.
The correo is ready to depart
The correo was the last of the number of passenger trains the line had operated to ferry the mine workers up and down the valley. It was the task of the star engine number 31, while the other engines spent their time hauling hopper cars full of coal down the line and shunting them into the power station or the cargo yard of Ponferrada. The railway also had a couple of spanish broad gage engines to work in that part of the yard. So when I came back the next morning everything was back to normal and there was a lot of activity on the line since they had to make up for not operating for a while.
There was one other railway buff on the train. The few other passengers were locals who used the slow train to go to one of the villages along the line. Even though the line is only just about 60 km long, the engine had to refill water several times, which made the journey even slower. And then number 31 had a problem and had to be exchanged for number 15, a younger version of the same construction, which had brought a train of empty coal cars to a huge loading bunker. Despite the delays I made it back on time to pick up the bit of my luggage at the hotel and catch the night train to Madrid. The bottle of cognac was still untouched.
I took the correo on May, 6th 1980. On May 10th the railway stopped the passenger service. In 1981 the first Diesel engines appeared on the line and some years later the fire of the last steam engine was extinguished. In 2012 the operation of coal trains ended. Today the rails and the modern hopper cars which replaced the ones I had seen in 1980 are slowly overgrown by the weeds.
Number 31 has to be exchanged for another engine
They have built a fancy museum which houses a selection of the rolling stock still active at the time of my visit. One of the steam engines is even operating. Unfortunately it has only got a couple of meters of track. Next door the old coal fired power station was turned into the museum “fabrica de la luz”, factory of the light. Plans to run a tourist train out of Villablino down the scenic valley of the Sil were not realised so far. Many of the other engines are preserved elsewhere and one of the Baldwins even made it to the island of Mallorca. The others were dumped and the rusty remains still are visible on the terrain view of google maps. A symbol for the disappearance of the world of coal and steel to be replaced by one where virtual reality is more important.
