Rail transport in Cuba

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Standard gauge network of the Ferrocarriles de Cuba
Narrow gauge steam locomotive on the grounds of the Rafael Freyre sugar mill
Length of the Cuban rail network, 1980 to 2007

Rail transport in Cuba has existed since 1836. Most of the current route network is operated by the state railway company Ferrocarriles de Cuba (FCC or FC, also: Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Cuba ).

Route network

The route network with standard gauge (1435 mm) extends from Guane ( Province of Pinar del Río ) in the westernmost part of the island to the Bay of Guantánamo in the eastern part. Not including the sugar railways, it covers around 4,226 kilometers, 140 kilometers of which are electrified. Due to the stretched shape of Cuba, there is a main line in a west-east direction from Havana via Santa Clara , Ciego de Ávila , Camagüey and Las Tunas to Santiago de Cuba , which branches out into branch lines to Cienfuegos , Sancti Spíritus , Nuevitas and Holguín. extended to Pinar del Río and Guantánamo.

The routes are mostly single-track. Some routes, for example to Trinidad on the south coast, are out of service after being damaged by natural disasters.

history

From 1836: pioneering age

Plan of Havana with railroad lines around 1888

On October 12, 1834, the King of Spain Ferdinand VII approved the construction of Cuba's first railway line from Havana to Bejucal . When the line opened on November 19, 1837, it was the first steam train line in Latin America. Railways were only in operation in a few countries in Europe and the USA; the mother country Spain did not yet have a railway line.

The line was initially 27.5 kilometers long and was extended by 17 kilometers to Güines until November 19, 1839 . In December 1843 the cities of San Felipe and Batabanó on the south coast were connected to the railway network. As early as 1836, Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros built a horse-drawn railway from Camagüey (then Puerto Príncipe ) to Nuevitas in the east of the island, which can also be considered Cuba's first railway. From November 20, 1857, the urban tram (Ferrocarril Urbano de la Habana) was built in Havana, and when it opened on February 3, 1859, it was one of the first in the world after Paris. The first route led from the train station to the port, and by 1865 the network was expanded to 17 kilometers. 32 passenger and 16 freight cars were in operation in 1865.

Opening date from to Length in km operator
1836 Camagüey (then Puerto Príncipe ) Nuevitas ?
November 19, 1837 Havana Bejucal 27.5 km Compañía de Caminos de Hierro de La Habana
November 19, 1839 Bejucal Güines 17 km Compañía de Caminos de Hierro de La Habana
December 1844 Rincon San Antonio de los Baños 13 km Compañía de Caminos de Hierro de La Habana
December 1847 Güines Los Palos 31 km Compañía de Caminos de Hierro de La Habana
November 1848 Los Palos Unión de Reyes 21 km Compañía de Caminos de Hierro de La Habana
August 1849 San Antonio de los Baños Guanajay 21 km Compañía de Caminos de Hierro de La Habana
October 15, 1861 Güines Matanzas ? Compañía de Caminos de Hierro de La Habana

Around 1900: Closing the gap between East and West

Under the leadership of the Canadian Sir William Van Horne (1843-1915), the 573 kilometer gap between the province of Las Villas (Santa Clara) and the east ( Camagüey ) was closed by December 8, 1902. As a result, there were a number of extensions:

In 1912 the new Estación Central de Ferrocarriles was built in Havana in an eclectic style .

1924: Founding of Ferrocarriles Consolidados de Cuba

In 1924, the Ferrocarriles Consolidados de Cuba and the previously independent companies were founded as the forerunner of the Ferrocarriles de Cuba in a controversial legislation

united with each other.

Later there were the following takeovers of companies:

1940 to 1959

During the Second World War, the railroad suffered from a lack of resources, especially fuel, but was able to achieve considerable increases in transport performance as road traffic was largely paralyzed due to the lack of rubber and fuel. In 1940/41 241% more passengers, 73% more sugar and a total of 53% more tons were transported compared to 1931/32 with only 80% of the locomotives.

In the 1940s, this transported an average of 3.4 million travelers and 10 million tons of cargo per year. In 1943 the company Omnibus La Cubana was taken over with its intercity bus routes between Santiago de Cuba, Palma Soriano , Bayamo and Havana.

In 1948 Omnibus La Criolla, SA (Santiago de Cuba - La Maya - Guantánamo ) and the Omnibus La Mambisa, SA Santiago de Cuba - El Cobre were founded as subsidiaries. The routes of Omnibus La Cubana and La Criolla ran parallel to existing railway lines and were intended to prepare the planned replacement of rail travel off the main line.

After the end of this first special period , the technical equipment of the depot was improved and modern track construction tools were procured. The tracks on many main lines were replaced and new station buildings were built. From 1945 new vehicles were procured, such as ten Mikado steam locomotives for transporting sugar and diesel-electric locomotives for long-distance train traffic between Santiago de Cuba and Havana. In February 1951, a first-class service was set up between Camagüey and Havana with air-conditioned BUDD railcars (travel time around nine hours, including food at the seat). Most of the wagon material that was also procured is still in use today.

1958: Attack on the Blindado door

During the Cuban Revolution , on December 29, 1958, a train robbery took place in Santa Clara, of which the Tren Blindado National Monument commemorates today . Ernesto Che Guevara and two dozen rebels commanded by him derailed an armored train and captured weapons and ammunition that Che Guevara used to capture Santa Clara .

1959: Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Cuba

Since the revolution, the national railway network has been controlled by the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Cuba. The sugar railways were subordinate to the MINAZ until its dissolution .

In August 1961, the operating company West India Fruit and Steamship Company finally stopped the rail ferry connections from Havana to the USA. The political confrontation of the Cuban revolutionary leadership with the USA restricted trade and made further operations impossible.

1963 to 1966: ghost locomotives from Great Britain

In 1963 a delegation from the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Cuba visited Great Britain and held talks with British Railways about the possibility of modifying British locomotives for use in Cuba. Based on the information obtained, Kuba ordered ten diesel-electric locomotives from Brush based on the Class 47 with a Sulzer engine.

For Brush, the contract was politically sensitive, as the parent company Hawker Siddeley had significant interests in the US defense sector . The embargo imposed by the USA , as well as the still tense situation after the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, required the contract to be kept secret.

In order to deceive the public, extensive concealment was carried out. It was stated that the locomotives will be built in the Clayton Equipment Company's Hatton Works at Derby (instead of their own Falcon Works). The manufacturer's labels were manipulated accordingly and the required working hours were not shown. They were placed on bogies of freight cars for final assembly and painting by International Combustion Ltd. transferred to Derby. The subsequent tests of the locomotives on the Derby - Bristol line took place under cover of darkness and due to the couplings without wagons. The first two locomotives were brought to Cuba from the port of Hull on board the Yugoslav freighter Kolasin. Despite all the secrecy, it was on the front page of the Hull Daily Mail . By the beginning of 1966, all locomotives (2501-2510) had been delivered. After arriving in Cuba, the locomotives kept their green paintwork, but a yellow stripe and the yellow lettering of the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Cuba were added. Initially the numbers were changed to T975 – T984, later the old numbers were used with a prefix 5. Later they were painted red and were in use until February 1992. Then they were parked at Cárdenas and were probably dismantled.

From 1990: collapse

In the early 1990s, the economic crisis hit the railroad as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc . A lack of fuel and the lack of spare parts brought railway operations to a largely standstill.

From 1996 onwards, the Cuban Railways procured used material abroad to replace the locomotives that had failed due to a lack of spare parts, around five MLW RSC-14 locomotives from Canada and nine electric railcars for the Hershey Railway from the Spanish Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC).

From 2000: revival

VT 771 in Cuba
Passenger compartment of a passenger coach from Mexico on the route to Santa Clara

As the economic situation improved, the railway began to revive. Used vehicles are now being imported in large numbers from Canada , Mexico and Europe. From Deutsche Bahn in 2002 used light railcars were the series 771 bought, they could not be used under certain conditions to open windows and to the lack of air conditioning because of the. The cars were used with practically no changes. Even the lettering in the cars has not been changed, neither in the passenger compartment nor on the driver's cabs that the staff has to deal with. Only the radio equipment for the train radio was removed before the handover, as it would not have been used in Cuba.

The steam operation, which was maintained due to the lack of fuel, was largely discontinued. Only during the sugar cane harvest (called Zafra ) are a few steam locomotives still in use. However, the steam locomotives are partly kept in reserve as well as for tourist trains and photo freight trains. The existing separation between Ferrocarrilles de Cuba and MINAZ was softened, and extensive cooperation in maintenance and operation was established. In 2006, 112 locomotives were imported from China, and the possibility of delivering 500 cars was agreed with Iran .

Although the Cuban railway network has been modernized since the beginning of the 2000s, the government has been increasingly using funds to revitalize the sector since 2011. The connection of the new port in Mariel will also be important. At the end of 2012, the Cuban public rail network stretched over 8125 kilometers (2010: 5064 km). Cuba had 217 locomotives, of which only 48 percent were operational.

A rail bus in Levisa on the north coast near Mayari

The existing timetables are mostly adhered to, but unreliable material still leads to very long delays. Around one billion person-kilometers are currently covered each year (around 73 billion in Germany).

In 2005, Cuba signed a US $ 100 million contract with China to purchase new diesel locomotives and a total of 1,000 scheduled buses. At the beginning of 2006, the twelve new DF7G-C (2500 HP) diesel locomotives were delivered to Cuba. These are mainly used in long- distance passenger transport. In total, Ferrocarriles de Cuba has around 500 locomotives, but more than half of them are inoperable. The railway is under the Dirección de transporte ferroviario of the Ministry of Transport.

While extensive construction work in 2006 and 2007 made it almost impossible to increase transport performance, freight transport performance rose by 12% in 2008 compared to the previous year.

For 2011, the UFC specifies a transport performance of 15.5 million tons of cargo. At 1.38 tons per inhabitant, this corresponds to about a third of the German value of 4.57 tons per inhabitant. In October 2007, 100 passenger coaches and 100 freight wagons were ordered from the Iranian manufacturer Wagon Pars .

Freight traffic has priority over passenger traffic in Cuba. At the beginning of 2009, Cuba had 259 local passenger cars, of which only 166 were operational. Only 60 of the total of 212 cars were available for long-distance passenger trains.

The poor state of the superstructure and the lack of qualified personnel are causing increasing problems on the railways.

Since July 2011, the UFC has been divided into the four divisions Occidente (West), Centro (Middle), Centro Oeste (Middle East) and Oriente (East) for railway operations and three supporting companies for the construction, logistics and production of track construction material.

On February 24, 2017, there was a serious collision between a railcar on a single-track line and a freight train used for the sugar harvest five kilometers north of Sancti Spíritus on the route to Tuinucú. The accident left 6 dead and 48 injured.

Former railway companies

The route network includes parts that were built by the following former railway companies:

Ferrocarriles del Norte de Cuba

In 1916 Colonel Jose M. Tarafa founded the Ferrocarriles del Norte de Cuba . The company built the parallel connection between Nuevitas and Morón , Florencia and Chambas, north of the section of the main route between Camagüey and Santa Clara . The main purpose was to transport sugar from the Violeta , Velasco and other sugar mills to the world's largest sugar export port, Nuevitas. In 1924 the company was incorporated into the Ferrocarriles Consolidados de Cuba by law .

The Cuba Railroad Company

The Cuba Railroad Company was founded in 1902 with the aim of connecting Havana and the eastern railways around Camagüey. The Canadian William Cornelius Van Horne (1843–1915) directed the work. In 1924 the company became a founding component of the Ferrocarriles Consolidados de Cuba .

Ferrocarril de Camaguey a Nuevitas

Under the direction of Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros , the 80-kilometer connection between Camagüey and Nuevitas was built as a horse-drawn railway in 1836 . In 1924 it was also incorporated into the Ferrocarriles Consolidados de Cuba .

Ferrocarril Espirituano

The 42-kilometer route of the Ferrocarril Espirituano from Sancti Spíritus to Tunas de Zaza was taken over in 1927 by the Ferrocarriles Consolidados de Cuba .

Ferrocarril Guantánamo y Occidente

The Ferrocarril Guantánamo y Occidente business until the takeover in 1948, the 125 km long connection between San Luis and Guantánamo .

Sugar tracks

Decommissioned steam locomotive built by Baldwin, Philadelphia (USA)

The sugar cane cultivation that used to characterize the island has created an extensive network (around 7,742 km) of normal (share around 65%) and narrow-gauge railway lines. They are used to transport the freshly harvested sugar cane to the sugar mills and the end products to the ports. Up until 2005 steam locomotives were still used in some cases. Today they only serve as a reserve for diesel locomotives.

During the annual sugar cane harvest in spring, the entire harvest must be transported within a few weeks, as the sugar cane becomes unusable just a few days after being cut.

The sugar railways are subordinate to the state sugar company MINAZ (Ministerio del Azúcar).

The Zafra-Bahn has a modular, true-to-original model railway system in size 0n30. Another model is in the Havana Rum Museum.

Well-known routes

Hershey Railway

See also: Hershey Railway

In 1916 the Hershey Chocolate Corporation of Pennsylvania bought large estates east of Havana. She built a large sugar mill ( Central Hershey ) between the capital (about 45 kilometers east) and Matanzas . To transport the products and workers, a 135-kilometer-long track network was created, which was electrified from 1919. In January 1922, passenger operations began between Matanzas and the Zuckermühle with rolling stock from General Electric and J. G. Brill . It is currently the only electrified network in Cuba. Only passenger transport is still electric with railcars imported from Spain. The operator is Ferrocarril Eléctrico de Cuba , based in Havana.

Door No. 1 (Tren Francés)

The express train with the number 1 from Havana to Santiago (number 2 in the opposite direction) is the flagship of the Cuban railways. There are intermediate stops in Santa Clara and Camagüey. The trains consist of DF7G-C diesel locomotives and used passenger coaches purchased from the SNCF . These air-conditioned carriages with car bodies made of stainless steel were originally used as Trans-Europ-Express between Paris , Brussels and Amsterdam . They were sold to Cuba in 2001. The capacity is around 600 seats per trip. The train is extremely punctual and reliable by Cuban standards.

Rolling stock

Locomotive stock
number Type Manufacturer country Remarks
108 TE114K Luhansk locomotive factory USSR
79 TEM2TK Bryansk Engineering Factory USSR
70 DVM-9   Hungary
50 MX624 MLW Canada
41 G8 EMD United States
40 TEM4 Lyudinovo diesel locomotive factory USSR
30th MGO   France
25th TEM15   USSR
12 GMD1 General Motors Diesel United States
20th M62-K Luhansk locomotive factory USSR
19th C30-7 GE United States
16 BR 771 Waggon construction Bautzen GDR Light railcar, delivered used after 2000, plus 3 control cars BR 971
14th BR 772 Waggon construction Bautzen GDR Light railcars, delivered used after 2000, plus 21 control cars BR 972
12> DF7G-C   China Newly delivered between 2005 and 2008, a total of 51 Chinese machines of different types

Notes for tourists

As a foreign visitor you pay for a train journey in CUC . A ticket in his name with a seat number for long-distance trains can be obtained one day before departure in the city's railroad reservation offices or at major train stations . At least one hour before departure, the ticket must be reconfirmed (stamped) at the departure station, otherwise the reserved space will be allocated. The conductors on the train use lists to check the seat occupancy so that the reserved seat can be used in any case. Tickets bought in black without your own name are worthless, there is no standing room on long-distance trains . With the exception of the “French train” for tourists between Havana and Santiago, there are no special offers for foreigners, you travel with the regular trains.

literature

  • Oscar Zanetti Lecuona, Alejandro García Álvarez: Caminos para el azúcar . Ed. de Ciencias Sociales, Havana 1987.
  • Oscar Zanetti Lecuona, Alejandro García Álvarez: Sugar and Railroads. A Cuban History; 1837-1959 . The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London 1998.
  • Dirk Höllerhage: The railway in Havana, Cuba . In: Eisenbahn-Kurier , 9/2011, pp. 73–76.

Web links

Commons : Rail transport in Cuba  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ferrocarril Trinidad – Placetas: El ramal condenado , in: Escambray of August 10, 2012, accessed on August 22, 2013 (Spanish)
  2. ↑ Monumentos Nacionales Santa Clara: Sitio Histórico del descarrilamiento, acción y toma del Tren Blindado y Loma del Capiro ( Memento of December 1, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) CentroArte - Culture in the province of Villa Clara
  3. ↑ At the end of 1999, Cuba bought twelve GMD1 (A1A-A1A) locomotives from Canadian National
  4. ↑ Locomotora necesaria de los cambios Juventud Rebelde from January 31, 2014
  5. ↑ ila 355 , May 2012, p. 48f.
  6. ↑ ONE 2012 ( MS Excel ; 64 kB)
  7. ↑ Alta demanda de trenes en Cuba Radio Rebelde from May 15, 2014
  8. ↑ Cuba recibe 11 locomotoras chinas y avanza en modernizacion de ferrocaril , eluniverso.com. December 8, 2008. Accessed December 30, 2008. 
  9. ^ A b El ferrocarril cubano no es historia antigua , granma.cubaweb.cu. December 17, 2012. Retrieved January 6, 2013. 
  10. ↑ Freight transport 2011: Transport volume increases by 6.5%. Destatis , February 2, 2012; archived from the original on February 17, 2013 ; Retrieved January 17, 2013 (press release no.038).
  11. ↑ Iran to build 300 wagons for Cuba. Iran Khodro Industrial Group, October 30, 2007, accessed November 29, 2007 .
  12. ↑ Los desafíos del ferrocarril cubano , juventudrebelde.cu. March 12, 2009. Retrieved March 25, 2008. 
  13. ^ Accidente ferroviario en Sancti Spíritus se debió a incumplimiento de la orden de vía. In: Cubadebate. March 16, 2017, Retrieved April 29, 2017 (Spanish).
  14. ^ MIBA La Zafra in Cuba