Marowijne Company Railway

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Marowijne Company Railway
John Lucas steam locomotive parked in the jungle at Marowijne
John Lucas steam locomotive parked in the jungle at Marowijne
Route length: 29 km
Gauge : 1524 mm ( Russian gauge )
Legend
   
 0 Araguaya Creek on Marowijne
   
 17 bridges
   
 29 Wilson Creek Mine

The Marowijne Company railway was a 29 km long, broad gauge railway with a gauge of 60 inches (1524 mm), which ran from the base camp on Araguaya Creek on the left bank of the Marowijne River to a gold mine called Wilson Creek Mine in Suriname .

history

Howard Ashley Pedrick (1863-1941) came to Suriname in May 1899 on behalf of Philadelphia-based financier Robert H. Foerderer and his mining company The Marowijne Company . He built a railroad to connect the gold mine to the Marowijne River, the border with French Guiana , where there was enough water to wash the ore.

Two steam locomotives, 100 lorries, rails and track material for the 29 km long railway line as well as material for a boiler house, a workshop, a steam pump system, a sawmill and two Marion steam shovel excavators were shipped from Boston to Albina in December 1899 with the five-mast schooner La Plata .

The route was then leveled with a total of 17 bridges and the tracks were laid. Seven of these bridges crossed the same creek. Commercial gold mining began after the railroad was operational, but most of the gold was unexplained before the panning ended. As a result, Foederer withdrew from The Marowijne Company in 1902 with a loss of $ 2.5 million. His equipment was auctioned off at a public auction in 1907 and parked in the jungle, where some of it is still to be found today.

railroad

The railway equipment was imported second-hand from broad gauge railways with a gauge of 60 inches (1524 mm).

One of the two locomotives, called John Lucas , was manufactured by Baldwin in 1878 with the factory number 4287 for the Camden & Atlantic Railroad. It was parked in the jungle on the banks of Pakira Creek, 3 miles from the Marowijne River. She weighed 20,412 kg (45,000 lbs).

The second locomotive was parked on the banks of the Marowijne River.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Howard Ashley Pedrick (1863-1941), edited by Will deGrochy and William L. Magee: Jungle Gold: Dad Pedrick's Story. Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1930.
  2. ^ Howard Ashley Pedrick (1863-1941), edited by Will deGrochy and William L. Magee: Route sketch on the dust jacket of Jungle Gold: Dad Pedrick's Story. Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1930.
  3. ↑ Pakira Kreek on Mapcarta.
  4. ↑ Surinaamsche Almanak voor het Jaar 1901. p. 104.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Rob Dickinson, Thomas Kautzor and Torsten Schneider: The Railways of Surinam, 2014 - Mining Railways. Retrieved January 7, 2019.
  6. ↑ FC Bubberman: Gold in Suriname. In: Suralco Magazine. Volume 9, No. 3, 1977.
  7. ↑ Samuel M. Vauclain and Earl Chapin May: Steaming up. The Saturday Evening Post, Volume 201, No. 44, May 4, 1929.
  8. ^ Anda Suriname: Locomotives in the jungle.
  9. ↑ Steve Llanso: Camden & Atlantic 2-4-4 Locomotives in the United States.
  10. ↑ DeGolyer, Volume 8. S. 189th
  11. ^ Baldwin Locomotive Works, Illustrated Catalog of Locomotives, 2nd Edition, Philadelphia, Pa: JB Lippincott & Co, 1881, pp. 138-142

Coordinates: 4 ° 46 '50.2 "  N , 54 ° 28' 6.2"  W.