Puerto Cabello and Valencia railway

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The Puerto Cabello and Valencia railway is a defunct railway in Venezuela. The 55 km railway was constructed in the 1880s to link Valencia, then the country's second city, with the Caribbean port of Puerto Cabello. It closed in the 1950s.

Planning the railway

Antonio Guzmán Blanco, who was president of Venezuela for three separate terms, negotiated a concession with British entrepreneurs to build the railway. The Puerto Cabello and Valencia Railway Company was created.

The project involved a climb of 500 metres, crossing the mountains of the Venezuelan Coastal Range. The route chosen involved a short coastal stretch from Puerto Cabello to El Palito at the mouth of the River Aguas Calientes, after which the line mostly followed the course of the river.[1][2]

The gauge was 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm). The use of a narrow gauge to help with the problems caused by hilly terrain was consistent with the principles of the engineer Robert Fairlie, who was involved in surveying near Puerto Cabello in the 1870s.[3] However, reaching the summit presented technical difficulties. In accordance with the directions of the engineer John Carruthers,[4] rather than employ a uniform gradient throughout the route, it was decided to build an inclined plane above Las Trincheras. Carruthers had experience of the Fell mountain railway system in New Zealand, but for this section he used rack and pinion designed on the Abt system recently developed for use in the Harz mountains of Germany.[2]

Stations

Valencia's terminus was Camoruco railway station in a suburb 3 km from the city center. Plans were made in advance for a tramway from the station to the Plaza Bolívar in the city centre.[5] Initially horse-drawn, the trams were electrified in 1915.

There were six other stations,[6]

Inauguration and subsequent history of the railway

The railway was inaugurated in February 1888 by Guzman Blanco's successor Hermógenes López. Profitability was affected by the unstable political situation in Venezuela at the end of the 19th century; matters were particularly bad during the revolucion legalistica, the Venezuela civil war of 1892 which brought Joaquín Crespo to power for the second time. The railway sought compensation for damage caused by civil war. Failure to pay such damages was one of the causes of the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903 when European powers imposed a naval blockade on Venezuela.

The right to construct and to operate this railway was to be an exclusive one for ninety-nine years from the date of its completion. However, the railway was nationalised in 1916.[6]

Later railways

The same gauge was used by the slightly later Great Venezuela Railway, a German project which ran to Valencia from Caracas. When the Great Venezuela Railway opened in 1894 the two lines were separate, but track was eventually laid to connect Valencia's two termini, Camoruco and San Blas.

In the 21st century work began on a new railway from Puerto Cabello to La Encrucijada, a transport hub in Aragua State. The project was planned by the State Railways Institution. The route partly replicates the Puerto Cabello and Valencia railway, but the scale is more ambitious. Among the tunnels is the 7,702 m Bárbula Tunnel, between Las Trincheras and Naguanagua, which is claimed to be the longest in South America.[7] In 2016 work on the Puerto Cabello railway was described as "irregular and marked by slow payments by the client as a result of the country’s poor economic conditions, mainly related to the drop in the price of oil." [8]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Valencia (Venezuela)" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 846.
  2. ^ a b Carruthers, John (1889). "The Trincheras Steep Incline on the Puerto Cabello and Valencia Railway, Venezuela". Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers. ICE Publishing. 96. doi:10.1680/imotp.1889.20790.
  3. ^ Harrison, William Jerome (1889). "Fairlie, Robert Francis" . In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 18. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 153.
  4. ^ "Obituary: John Carruthers". Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers. 198. 1914. doi:10.1680/imotp.1914.16319.
  5. ^ Morrison, A. "Map of Valencia". Retrieved 14 April 2019.
  6. ^ a b Alcántara Borges, A (2018). "El Ferrocarril Inglés" [The English railway]. Notitarde (www.notitarde.com) (in Spanish).
  7. ^ "Puerto Cabello-La Encrucijada Rail Line in Venezuela is 50% Complete". 2008. Retrieved 2019-04-27.
  8. ^ Guthrie (2016). "Salini Impregilo beats targets - KHL Group". www.khl.com. Retrieved 2019-04-27.
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