Ferrocarril de Península Valdés
| Ferrocarril de Península Valdés | |||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Krauss 0-4-0T locomotive with freight train near Puerto Pirámides
| |||||||||||||||||||||
 Salt train in Salinas Grandes station
| |||||||||||||||||||||
 Route
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 762 mm ( narrow gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
The Ferrocarril de Peninsula Valdes ( Peninsula Railway Valdés ) was a 1901-1920 run 32km Vineyard - private railway company Ferro y Piaggio with a track width of 2 feet 6 inches (762 mm) for freight and passenger traffic between the town of Puerto Pirámides and the Salinas Grandes in the Chubut Province of Argentina.
history
The Valdés peninsula was discovered and settled by the Spaniards Juan de la Piedra and Francisco de Viedma. In search of drinking water, they found the salt flats. The Italian settler Anonio Munno, who came to Puerto Madryn in 1885 to build Ferrocarril Central del Chubut , was the first to receive a license to mine salt. After the land was surveyed in 1892, he began to mine the salt of the salt lakes. It was carried in sacks to the port of San José, from where it was shipped to Bahía Blanca , Buenos Aires or Montevideo .
Munno teamed up with Ernesto Piaggio and brothers Alejandro and José Ferro in 1898 in order to be able to mine the salt more effectively. Because of its more favorable properties as a natural harbor, they chose Puerto Pirámides as the loading port. In July 1900, the Argentine National Congress awarded Piaggio a concession to build a 34 km long narrow-gauge railway line from Puerto Pirámides to the salt lakes known as Salinas Grandes . The concession based on Law N ° 3.898 made it clear that the route would not receive any government grants or guarantees and obliged Piaggio to start construction within 2 months of receiving the permit and to finish it within a year. The building materials could be imported duty-free for a period of 20 years. Telegraph and telephone lines should be laid between stops in the first few years.
Construction
The engineer Belcridi was employed as surveyor and project manager. A large camp was built for the construction workers and their families. First the tracks were laid and then the buildings were erected. A hotel, an office building, a fuel store, a workshop and a warehouse for storing the tracks were built, as well as a post office and residential buildings for the locomotive drivers and other employees.
The line was opened in June 1901 and handed over to the salt production company Ferro y Piaggio , which Piaggio and the Ferro brothers owned, but in which Munno had a share. In addition to the operation of the railway line, Ferro y Piaggio held the concession for 15,000 hectares in Salinas Grandes, the production volume of which was 12,000 t. Until 1902 the railway transported 2,300 tons of goods, but did not offer any passenger transport. Piaggio applied for a concession for a railway line from the salt lakes to another port on the Gulf of San José. It was granted, but its construction did not begin.
Because of the railway line, many people came to the region and set up their shops and businesses there. Then the city of Puerto Pirámides was founded by the settlers because the building materials for the route construction were landed there. The corrugated iron huts were described as fragile .
Rail vehicles
Locomotives
The railway company owned five steam locomotives:
- A 0-4-0 T Krauss 2249 from 1890
- A 0-6-0 Jung 451 from 1900
- Three 0-6-0 Orenstein & Koppel
Wagons
There were three freight wagons and one passenger car. A fleet list from 1903 lists 30 cars and one caboose .
Loaded freight wagons
Passenger cars
Decline and closure
After the First World War , the need for salt to preserve food decreased because more refrigerators were used, so that sales decreased. Many residents left Puerto Pirámides due to the economic crisis.
Creditors took over the debts of Piaggio y Cía and founded the Empresa Salinera Argentina , at which the Banco de la Nación Argentina , W. Cooper y Cía. and the insurance company La Italia were involved. Nevertheless, the Empresa Salinera Argentina was dissolved in 1916.
All of the company's assets were acquired by entrepreneur Alejandro Ferro, but the lack of documents or titles proving his rights over the railroad led to the railway's closure in 1920. The Chubut government expropriated the railroad company in 1958. A report from the United States Department of Commerce revealed that the railroad had been making losses since 1916, despite financial problems as early as 1904. According to the report, salt mining had stopped before Ferro acquired the company. Puerto Pirámides' population continued to decline until the 1970s when the tourist industry revitalized the city.
A few years after the line was closed, track systems were removed and the rail vehicles auctioned or sold as scrap. The few remains of wagons are currently on display in the Península Valdés Museum and a park in Puerto Pirámides.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Llevando la sal al mar 1, el FC de la Península Valdés
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Ferrocarril de la sal , Río Negro Online, December 18, 2004.
- ↑ a b c d “Pirámides y NO Pirámide” by Lucio Barba Ruiz , Patagonia Database.
- ↑ a b Gerry Leitner: Argentina Travel Companion. Hunter Publishing (NJ), ISBN 0-9587498-1-7 , p. 530 (reading sample, books.google.com ).
- ↑ Estadística de los Ferrocarriles en explotación. Volume XI, Buenos Aires 1902.
- ↑ Pasado Histórico ( Memento of August 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) in the Puerto Pirámides portal, August 7, 2011.
- ↑ Puerto Pirámide village ( Memento of February 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), Zonotrikia.com, 2009.
- ↑ Jorge Waddell: Los Industriales de la Vía Neuquén. In: Todo Trenes. No. 32, Buenos Aires 2004.
Coordinates: 42 ° 34 ′ 11.4 ″ S , 64 ° 16 ′ 39.6 ″ W.