A singular ‘Express’ ride
Filed Under Shower Curtain | Posted on March 29, 2008
When Paul Theroux arrived in the Patagonian town of Esquel aboard a creaking antique rail carriage pulled by a steam engine resembling a “demented samovar on wheels”, it was his last stop on a train journey that began in Boston. Thirty years later, the Old Patagonian Express still steams out of Esquel in south-west Argentina, and its regular run takes you 20 kilometres east to Nahuel Pan, where a small band of native Mapuche Indians cling to their ancient culture.This remote corner of Patagonia has long been a place of last stands, a refuge for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a native deer called the huemul and the giant alerce tree, the oldest living thing in South America. Captain Fitzroy used its waterproof bark to caulk the hull of the Beagle and its scientific name, Fitzroya cupressoides, was bestowed by Darwin. They thrive in poor thin soil and can reach an age of 4,000 years. For now, the railway also survives, still trundling along with its original steam locomotives. The Old Patagonian Express was never really an express train. During a journey that took 14 hours, Theroux invented this ironic and romantic new name for the narrow gauge railway that was always known locally as La Trochita, the little narrow one. “The train would stop anywhere along the line to pick up passengers, and was the only link for remote communities,” explained author Sergio Sepiurka. “It ran so slowly that youngsters sometimes got out and ran along beside it.”Like an empty stage set, the railway terminus sits on a slight rise at the edge of a town hemmed in by snow-capped mountains. Despite the presence of baggy-trousered young snowboarders in ski season, the town retains a whiff of the frontier. As a prelude to departure, puffs of steam float up as the locomotive chugs back and forth, pulling the carriages out from a corrugated iron train shed. After 85 years of service, the equipment is showing its age.As we climbed steadily into the hills, I was settling into a warm contented drowsiness in the gently swaying carriage when my daydream was interrupted by another passenger.”Could you pass me a log please?” A fellow passenger asked, pointing to the pile under my feet of wood. He chucked a few logs in the little potbellied stove in the middle of the carriage and leaned over as if to share a confidence: “There are 85m cattle in Argentina and only 40m people.” I must not have seemed suitably impressed, so he added, “That, of course, does not include dairy cattle and breeding stock.”I made my way to the train’s makeshift dining car, which had been converted by a mother and daughter team from an old hospital carriage. Rough-hewn tables and benches were wedged into one end of the car. After taking my order, mother and daughter disappeared behind a curtain into the former operating theatre, and after some banging and clanking the daughter emerged a few minutes later with a steaming mug of coffee and a toasted sandwich.The train line runs through a region of the Andes that until 1902 was claimed by both Chile and Argentina. The two countries, on the point of war, agreed to ask the British King Edward VII to arbitrate.In the end, it was the unanimous vote of the Welsh immigrants that was decisive, giving Argentina clear title to a territory the size of Switzerland.Long before Chile and Argentina staked their claims, the region was home to the Mapuche. Some of the descendants of these fierce proud warriors live in a barren windswept valley above Esquel. It takes an hour for the train to climb 12 miles up to Nahuel Pan, where the native inhabitants live in a row of solid wooden cabins that were built using railway sleepers of quebracho, a native hardwood. The community is scattered and some ride in to meet the train, leaving their horses tethered behind the cabins.The Mapuche call themselves the People of the Earth, and like the elusive huemel, the deer known as the phantom of the Andes, their habitat has been reduced to a few mountain redoubts. It is a melancholy place, yet the young guides manning its small museum crackle with pride as they describe their annual rituals, when their elders offer sacrifice and prayers for peace and harmony in the world.”The steam train in Tierra del Fuego is much better,” according to a smartly turned out tourist from Buenos Aires. “It has padded seats, recorded commentary in four foreign languages and a uniformed staff.” There has never been enough money to equip La Trochita with such finery. It keeps going with the support of an enthusiastic group of local citizens and limited provincial subsidies. When the Argentine government began closing down the national rail network in 1993, the train was saved in part because Theroux’s book had made it famous.What remains is only a fraction of a more grandiose scheme. The original plan in the 1920s was to build a network of 1,225km, linking the Welsh settlement of Trevelin to the Atlantic. Only 422km were ever built, but in the meantime 79 locomotives and a vast array of passenger carriages and freight cars had been delivered from Germany and the US. For now, enough vestiges of that large order remain to keep ferrying passengers across Patagonia.
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