Trains of Thought in Ecuador
by
Randy Johnson
1981
Unpublished
Copyright © 1984, 2002-2008 Randy R. Johnson, all rights reserved
I make these observations at Sibambe station, about half way down out of the Andean highlands towards Guayaquil. Sibambe is my jumping off place for another train south, to Cuenca, and a chance to admire the old steam engine. I tell the engineer I am American and he wants American coins and cigarettes, but I have none.
I watch them check the engine until it's time for them to go. The engineer stamps out a cigarette, climbs back into the locomotive, and pulls on the whistle cord. The whistle screams, and screams again. He puts on his blackened gloves and with a salute my way, pours the steam to the pistons. The red cams churn, the steel wheels turn, and gray smoke chugs in labored belches from the tall black stack in the front of old "53". White steam rushes out from beside the wheels, as gray smoke fills the sky in faster and faster puffs, and the old "mixed train" -- three freight cars followed by three wooden passenger coaches -- pulls out for Guayaquil.
The "53" soon chugs its way out of sight and leaves me in the sunny midday quiet of Sibambe, to await the eleven o'clock train to Cuenca.
Inside Sibambe station, the telegraph key taps out its rhythm; the operator wears an old green visor. Sooty marble pillars hold up the more recent corrugated tin roof over the outdoor waiting room -- two long wooden benches. The rushing of the Rio Chanchan rustles up from behind the station, like an autumn wind through the poplars at home.
On both sides of the station rise steep and barren canyon walls, and the buttressed zig-zags and switchbacks that allow the trains down into this narrow little valley from the higher desert plains above, through the scenic "Devil's Nose" section of cliffs. Plains of volcanic sand, yucca, agave, and scrub cacti in red and yellow bloom; pampa and tundra grasses and a few hardy bushes that survive the windswept aridity at 3200 meters. The wool is thick on the sheep that traverse the steep slopes, and the burros are shaggy and small.
Sibambe is just a rail junction at the bottom of the rocky canyon in the middle of nowhere in particular. There is no town at all. Around the station are a few stone and cement block houses, and the water tower leaks showers of water down beside the tracks.
For a few fleeting moments, it all seems to come together for me in the stillness of Sibambe station. The rustle of the river, the whistle of the wind, the tap dance of the telegraph key conspire to quiet and settle my mind in this limbo between one train and the next, in the middle of nowhere in particular.
I look at my old gray canvas rucksack, ripped and sewn, smudged and worn; cracked leather and rusted rivets. "My old friend, we've done a few together, eh? A few trips, a few miles, a few buses and trucks, a few mountains, a few countries; a thousand hotels and as many memories." Sitting there against a marble pillar, the rucksack is as smudged and worn as I, as tattered and old, as fit and ready for this new land, this Andean frontier. Lean and mean, weathered and conditioned, tried and tested and still going on.
An hour later comes the "train" to Cuenca. Well, not quite a train, the "Auto-Ferro Cargo" is a one-car rolling Frankenstein's monster of rail travel, an absurd combination of bus, troop carrier, and train. Sometimes called the "Ferro-Bus", it is an old blue metal contraption with room for nine and a driver to sit in the front. The driver has a gear shift and a steering wheel, and starts the diesel engine with a key. On the plywood "dashboard" in front of him, the instrument panel has four dials: oil pressure, water temperature, charging voltage, and a portrait of the Holy Virgin! A funnel built directly into the top of the dashboard (often) feeds the radiator.
The front windscreen has a corner gone and half the side windows are missing in action. The engine sits under a large blue cover beside the driver -- just like the old Blue Bird special. The engine generates enough heat to keep everyone warm in the front compartment, even when we reach the misty highlands with the windows missing. Cargo and extra passengers find room in the cavernous rear cargo area which is, of course, without the benefit of heat.
On closer inspection, the AutoFerro is a bus engine, chassis, and drive-train (yep, an old Blue Bird!) with the rear of its body gutted, windows boarded up and a swinging tail gate cut out of the back panel. The front of the body looks like a train engine, with a cow-catcher and a big "#60" on the front, a centered train light and electric horns on the top.
The interior of the front section is a slap-dash of plywood, a couple of first class bus seats, and two bench seats. The driver's chair is welded tubing with clothesline mesh like a lawn chair; it is bolted to the floor and rocks back when he changes gears. Yes, the driver has a clutch and accelerator, but no brake pedal. The steering wheel operates the mechanical brake on the rear wheels; a big turn to the right does it.
The drive-train goes through a big truck differential and rear wheels, but on the wheels are not tires but heavy gears driving a big chain drive, which in turn drives another gear attached to the end of an extended axle which runs through the back of a set of dual train wheels. (It's hard to actually call this arrangement a bogie!) So there are two axles, the bus axle connected by gears and a chain to the train axle, which must be extended because the tracks are narrower than the wheelbase of the (former) bus.
Sometimes I think I'm riding in a bus, until we're heading into a left turn and the driver suddenly turns the steering wheel hard to the right to brake. Or when he takes his hands off the wheel altogether to lean out the window to shout to someone.
The Auto-Ferro leaves at 11:30 and we arrived in Cuenca a little after 7pm. And what a ride! Up, up through the mountains and back up into the clouds above 3000 meters, jostling down deep narrow creases cut through the mountains, brush and rocks on both sides nearly scraping the sides of our blue monster.
But then a gorgeous green mountain scenery unfolds beside the bus... er, train. There are wild roses and red paintbrush beside the tracks, and sheep and cattle grazing all around. Most of the animals are terrified by the train and struggle frantically against their tethers, staked into the ground. Here a calf breaks its tether, there a sheep tethered to the railway tracks crosses to the other side and then leaps back ahead of the train.
On this trip, we are delivering blue uniform work clothes to the many workers who keep the railway in passable condition, so we stop regularly to hand out shirt and pants as each man signs for his new clothing; size seems to be of little import.
Occasionally, we hit a small village and stop to load or unload a bit of cargo. The occasional passenger gets on, mostly Indian women with little children, and old men. They travel a few kilometers and get out again.
At 3:30 we stop at a small station 65 km. from Sibambe, still 72 km. from Cuenca -- not yet half way; but the steepest part is behind us and we are already back up in the highlands. We stop here for a "lunch break" but when we're ready to go again, the battery is dead and the train must be push-started! Everybody out to push the train!
The most exciting part of the trip comes as we approach civilization, from Azogues all the way to Cuenca, where the tracks run right beside houses and towns. Even here in the highlands, the railway is sunken a meter or two down in narrow ditches between the fields. And everywhere are cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens browsing along the railway tracks. Every few hundred meters a new drama unfolds as another beast finds itself directly in the path of our ferocious and clamorous machine, goes berserk and usually runs straight down the tracks, pursued by the train.
At one point, two cows are frightened by the train and take off running wildly, one on either side of the tracks. The engineer runs full speed ahead and slowly we gain on the cows. Just as we catch up to them, the one on the right goes crazy and jumps the tracks right in front of the train -- narrowly missing a collision -- and gallops in just behind the other cow, then scrambles madly up the embankment and into a field. The passengers remain on the edge of their seats, sticking our heads out of the window after each close encounter and fully expecting to see a dead or brutally maimed animal on the roadway. Miraculously, we seemed to hit none of them.
The coming of the Auto-Ferro also provides daily sport and exercise all of the local dogs en route. As soon as the engine is heard barging between the fields, the dogs take off at top speed, racing beside and above us through the fields and under fences until they tire and drop off -- or run into an impassible structure. They are quickly replaced by an unending stream of new canine recruits.
Since the tracks remain vacant all day, they also provide a common route for human pedestrians, who are occasionally taken by surprise at the sudden realization that the Auto-Ferro is closing in fast behind them, and they quickly jump off the tracks.
As we drop down into the dusk of the valley of Cuenca, a gorgeous mountainscape unfolds below -- valleys of dark green cultivation spread before tangled ranges of craggy Andean ridges. Cuenca itself does not present much of a spectacle as we slide wearily into the station above town. But at 7pm, at the end of a very long and eventful train-riding day, it still holds that great pleasure of being the end of the line. For today.
