Ferrocarril de Caldas

Ferrocarril de Caldas
Route length:	114 km
Gauge :	914 mm ( English 3-foot track )
Legend 0 Puerto Caldas on the Río Cauca 10 Cartago terminus 1917–1919 (La Vieja) 15th Villegas terminus 1919–1921 Nacederos 0 40 Pereira terminus 1921–1925 ( Río Otun ) Dos Quebradas Santa Rosa de Cabal Chinchiná then San Francisco Villamaría terminus 1925–1927 117 Manizales terminus from 1927 Ulloa Alcalá Quimbaya terminus 1927–1929 Montenegro Armenia terminus from 1929

The Ferrocarril de Caldas (Caldas Railway) was a railway line in the Colombian province of Caldas . Its former route also leads through the present-day provinces of Valle del Cauca , Risaralda and Quindío .

In its final expansion, it connected the provincial capital Manizales with the Río Cauca from 1927 . It had ten tunnels between 25 and 105 m in length. The operation was stopped due to unprofitability. The route is still visible in places, and in some places there are still rails.

history

Planning

At the beginning of the 20th century, the province of Caldas, which was only founded in 1905, was an up-and-coming center of coffee cultivation. However, the harvest had to be brought down to the Río Cauca by mules or ox carts , where it was transported on by steamers. In December 1911, the provincial government decided to build a railway line from Manizales to the Río Cauca, with the central government in Bogotá granting a grant of almost 10,000 pesos per kilometer. The province of Caldas should be the owner and operator.

The engineer Felipe Zapata Cuenca, who had studied in England and was already involved in the construction of a railway line in Uruguay, was commissioned with the initial planning. On January 1, 1912, Zapata submitted his report. He envisaged one of the endpoints in Manizales, the other in Puerto Caldas , where the river La Vieja flows into the Río Cauca. He planned with a track width of 60 cm, a route length of 80 km and estimated the construction costs at 2 million pesos, the construction time at two years. He also recommended a branch line to the city of Armenia .

On May 1, 1912, Zapata submitted a detailed plan. He had changed the track width from 60 cm to 91.4 cm because the Pacific Railway also used this size, and a direct connection was not excluded. For financial reasons, construction should begin on the Río Cauca and work up to Manizales. Detailed route planning for the first 36 km was completed on January 30, 1913, but it turned out that the cost was higher than initially anticipated, so the state increased its grant to 15,000 pesos per kilometer.

In the course of 1914, a large part of the route was measured, for which the engineer Jorge Paez Gonzalez was responsible. He mapped the section between Puerto Caldes and Quiebra de Vásquez , a small pass between Pereira and Santa Rosa de Cabal . The width of the route was 30 m and provided enough space for an overland telephone line next to the tracks. However, due to the First World War in Europe, coffee sales decreased, which suffered the Colombian economy, so that the start of construction was delayed.

First construction phase

Cartago station building (2015)

Finally, in August 1915, construction began under the direction of the engineer Luis A. Isaza. The route led from Puerto Caldes along the left bank of La Vieja to Cartago . These first 10 km went into operation on July 2, 1917. Trains were driven by locomotive No. 1 , which was named Zapata after the first planner . Zapata weighed 17.5 t and had a top speed of 30 km / h. The rolling stock also consisted of a 2nd class passenger car, eight freight cars, two cattle cars, six flat cars and two draisines.

After Pereira

Pereira station building (2012)

In the next construction phase, the La Vieja river was crossed with a steel bridge with a span of 70 m. The next train station was the small town of Villegas . This section went into operation on January 17, 1919.

The route then rose sharply and reached a plateau north of the valley of the Río Consota at km 21 . In some cases, 50 m high embankments had to be built. The new terminus of the line was Pereira . This section was inaugurated in 1921. In the meantime the fleet had grown to three locomotives, all named after the engineers who made this railway possible: the "Zapata" with 17.5 t, the "Paez" with 35 t and the "Isaza" with 37 t. As a loading station for the coffee harvest, the city of Pereira experienced a strong boom.

The construction work continued until Quiebra de Vásquez shortly before Santa Rosa de Cabal, then the project was suspended due to lack of money.

After Manizales

Manizales station building (2012)

The work was not only interrupted for financial reasons, it also had to be investigated how the railway line could be continued, because the area between Santa Rosa and Villa María and above all the further course to Manizales is topographically very demanding.

With the help of two officers from the United States Army Corps of Engineers , it was even examined whether an electrified route would be cheaper, because electric locomotives could conquer steep gradients, which would have shortened the route. The decision was ultimately made in favor of the existing steam locomotives.

The expansion continued when the Colombian government received $ 25 million from the United States through the Thomson-Urrutia Treaty and in return recognized Panama's independence . A part of this money was used from 1924 for the expansion of the railway network in Colombia, the Caldas Railway received a cheap loan of 720,000 Pesos for the expansion of the line to Manizales.

The line between Pereira and Villamaría was opened in 1925. The route to Manizales was much more demanding and required gradients of 4% to 5%. In 1927 the end point of Manizales was finally reached.

Since the Pacific Railway now had a connection to Cartago, the coffee from Caldas could be brought directly to Cali or the Pacific port of Buenaventura by train without reloading . The total length between Manizales and Puerto Caldas was 117 km.

Junction to Armenia

Armenia station building (2012)

At the same time as the last section between Villamaría and Manizales, a sideline to Armenia was built from 1925 , which branched off the main line in Nacederos, just before Pereira. The first section between Nacederos and Quimbaya went into operation in 1927, the second section with the rest of the route to Armenia in 1929.

Cable car in Manizales

While the Caldas Railway was being built on Manizales from the south-west, another freight route to the north-east was built from there: the Mariquita-Manizales material ropeway . From 1922 it was possible to transport coffee from Manizales to Mariquita in the province of Tolima by cable car . At 75 km in length, it was the longest cable car in the world in its time. The difference in altitude between Manizales and Mariquita was 1500 m.

A similar but much shorter cable car was built by the government of Caldas between Manizales and Villa María. The operation was transferred to the Ferrocarril de Caldas railway company.

Shutdown

A law of 1948 enabled the state to buy the provinces' railways. Due to the increasing competition from road traffic, the Caldas railway had only made losses in recent years, so that Caldas first handed the line over to the Ferrocarril del Pacífico company , until in 1951, like all Colombian lines, it was the Consejo Nacional de Ferrocarriles ( CNF) was transferred.

The route between Pereira and Manizales was soon taken out of service. In Pereira, the rails were removed in 1959 on the grounds that they were a hindrance to the city's growth. A few years later the route between Cartago and Pereira was also given up.

The former Manizales train station is now a university building, while the former Pereira and Armenia train stations house libraries. In these three cities, the former steam locomotives of the Caldas Railway stand as public exhibits. Some train stations are protected as cultural monuments.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gilberto Cardona López: Recuperacio del tendido ferreo. (PDF 7 MB) August 3, 2006, pp. 8–9 , accessed on March 18, 2012 (Spanish, contemporary pictures of the train station): "20 de Julio de 1921: 21 cañonazos recibieron el tren en Pereira" 
2. ↑ Ferrocarril de Caldas (1915-1929). Banco de la República de Colombia, accessed March 19, 2012 (Spanish). 
3. ^ Patrimonio Cultural de Risaralda. (No longer available online.) Secretaria Educacion Dosquebradas, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved March 18, 2012 (Spanish). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

literature

• Gabriel Poveda: El Antiguo Ferrorcarril de Caldas, 2003, online (PDF; 258 kB)

Web links

• Gilberto Cardona López: Initiative to revive the Caldas railway (Spanish, with many historical and current images and data; PDF; 8.2 MB)