STEAM RAILROADS IN PATAGONIA - SEASON 7

Our air carrier, who shall remain nameless, is on my "no-fly" list.  What terrible service.  The cabin crew was rude, the meals was horrible (only a forgettable AirTran meal was worse, and that could have been a tie), there was no movie, and they actually made me pay for a small bottle of wine.  That is a first for international travel.  And to really cap off the experience, my seat was literally in the last row of a 767-300 - right next to the toilet.  Gail was right in front of the toilet, and John was just ahead and to the side.  None of us got very much sleep.  Even my drugs didn't help.  We did arrive at 0645, only to find that our luggage was on the next flight.  We hung around the Buenos Aires airport until 1100, got our rain soaked luggage, and cabbed to the hotel.  And then our rooms weren't ready.  By the time we got our rooms, the city tour was starting, and so off we went in the downtown of this metropolis of 12 million people.  It was interesting, seeing the National Palace, some renovated dock areas, and the main train stations.  But traffic was heavy, and my eyes kept slamming shut.  The city is pretty, and a mixture of crumbling old, preserved old, and new.  The good news is that my cell phone works.  Yea!  It's not cheap, but at least it works.  It's amazing that we did these shoots ten years ago totally out of touch of everyone.

This mornings wake up call was at 0430.  Off we went to the airport for a two hour flight to the southwestern part of Argentina.  The destination was Bariloche, a town in the foothills of the Andes, and the start of the Patagonian Region.  The town is on the shores of two lakes, and surrounded by a national park.  It is very European looking, having been originally settled by Chilean Swiss, Austrians, and Germans.  So the architecture is more of a European style.  The town has a population of about 100,000, and is a prime ski spot for the winter months of June through August.  Think of it as the Aspen of Argentina.  There is a very exclusive hotel here, the Llao Llao (pronounced yow, yow) and so we shot some of that, the lakes and a bit of the town.  Everyone is tired.  Restaurants don't even start to serve here until 9 PM, so after a sandwich in the bar, it was off to bed.  Tomorrow we start the steam trains - in particular, the one that inspired the book, The Old Patagonian Express.  Which is what sparked my interest in this place.

We departed Bariloche at a reasonable hour this morning, and boarded the Tren Patagonico for our trip down to Jacobacci.  We did a false start, which may have been marred by some water blowing on the lens.  The line is the former broad gauge (66 inches) General Roca Railroad.  It was built for tourist purposes and winds through some desolate areas.  And you may have heard that the wind blows in Patagonia.  It does, and it is constant and strong.  It's strong enough to practically blow you over.  We did some run-bys, and had lunch on the train.  I, along with others, caught a bit of a nap.  The train had a cinema car, that was showing DVD films.  If you got bored looking at sheep and wind-swept high desert, you could go watch a movie.  The scenery is rugged, and is high desert.  So it is windy and arid, with few trees.  There were remnants of former cars along the line, and you would see houses built with what looked like railroad ties.  The ranches here are huge - thousands of acres, to support sheep, cattle, and horses.  We pulled into the railroad town of Jacobacci mid afternoon.  The place a little like a wind-blasted west Texas town, perhaps right out of The Last Picture Show.  We did a little shooting around the narrow gauge shops. This railroad is the La Trochita, which is only 30 inch gauge and has some Henschels, Baldwins, and nice coaches.  The line was originally built to haul sheep and wool, but is now primarily a tourist line.  And having had enough of the wind, we called it a day.  As a final note, there are a lot of Ford automobiles here.  Ford moved an entire production line down, and ran it until the 1990;s, with little change.  So there are a lot of Ford Falcons and 70/80's era pickup trucks.

The narrow gauge line (La Trochita 30") starts in Jacobacci, and was built in the 1920's. It was part of a plan to try to bring settlement and development into Patagonia. The line was not really completed until the 1940's.  There is still plenty of left over material from the construction.  Truthfully, there isn't much here to develop except ranching.  The area is high desert, with an annual rainfall of about 4 inches.  It looks a lot like northern Arizona or parts of Nevada - only a lot more of it. The vistas are vast and endless.  The vegetation is low, clumped, and windblown.  The only sign of human habitation is sheep, wild horses, and an occasional gaucho (cowboy).  There is plenty of desert wildlife.  We saw plenty of Patagonian gulls, hares the size of small dogs, and armadillos, as well as lynx, bobcat, wild dogs, and other desert wildlife. And we saw some flamingos! Through this vast setting, runs a train.  It originally carried a lot of concrete for the Andean dams, and other construction material.  Now it is a tourist line, headed with Baldwin or Henschel locos, pulling wooden coaches.  Our trip is double headed, and the vastness only accentuates the small size of the train.  The trains make an exciting compliment to the area, with their smoke and commotion.  At every little tow, people stop and wave.  We did the usual photo run-bys, and then we chased the train from the road.  As time was short, we boarded buses for the trip to the hotel. What else happened today.  Let's see - it rained, it snowed, it hailed, and all this with the Andes in the background.  On the way to the hotel, the bus broke down.  Fortunately, there was an Irish gentleman on the bus who collects buses.  He gave the driver a quick lesson in how to shift without using the clutch, and though late, we did arrive safely.

We left bright and early for the 3 1/2 hour bus ride back over the mountain to Cerro Mesa to pick up the train.  Thankfully, we will have shorter bus rides as the train gets closer.  There were plenty of children running around and all wanted their pictures taken.  We hopped on board, and spent the day traveling through the vast Patagonia region.  We did the usual photo stops and run-bys, and then had lunch on the train.  We continued to meet interesting people, and grabbed a few sound bites on camera.  The weather started well, but ended with rain.  And it ended with an unfortunate incident where several of the train service cars left the track at Norquinco.  No one was hurt, but some rail was torn up, and the line interrupted.  The La Trochita crew was organized, and - well, these things happen.  There is no fault; just an unhappy occurrence.

We started the day with a bus ride back to El Maiten, but this time over a mountain road that was still under construction.  I think the locals were surprised to see these large buses on the little one-lane (in parts) road.  But we made it safely, arriving just before Noon.  We did a standup with our guide and explored the shops and salvage yard,  As I mentioned, the line used 50 Henschel and 25 Baldwin locomotives.  The story goes that even though Henschel had won the bid, their slow delivery prompted the Baldwin infusion.  It was sad to see so many of these little engines just rusting away in the desert.  We did two run-bys, and did a straight run to Leleque.  There the train developed a hotbox on the maintenance car, and we were stuck for a bit, until the bearing could be cooled and repacked.  The rail fans, of course, loved it.  We opted to take the bus on the Esquel, while about half of the die hard fans rode the train in. -- The train developed a steam leak, and so was unable to travel very fast.  As a result, the people opting for the train arrived at the hotel about 2 AM.  It would have been a fun experience.  One of the passengers described the sunset and the glow of the engine at night.  I'm sorry to have missed it.  On the other hand, we all got to bed early.  Other observations:  I have never been to a place where there have been so many bleached bones just laying around.  In the Patagonia area, it is quite common to see carcasses in various stages of decomposition or just scattered bones.  The horses, cattle and sheep seem to suffer some winter kill or just plain blundering and dying.  Another observation is the wind.  It is very, very windy - the blow you of your feet windy.  And it is dusty.  All the wind just drives the dirt into things.  We also saw a whole flock of flamingos.  I would not have thought they would be prevalent this far south, but we have seen quite a few.

We had a later start due to the locomotive situation. Just to recap our journey on La Trochita, the narrow gauge line, we started in Jacobacci, ran to Norquinco where we had the derailment, on to El Maiten, and finally ended up at the end of the line in Esquel - a total of around 400 km.  At Esquel, they even had a narrow gauge speeder on display.  We started back today, climbing back up to the Patagonian plain, and did a couple of photo stops.  It was a beautiful day, with the snow capped mountains sparkling in the distance.  The valley at Esquel was green, and dotted with an occasional spot of a pink flamingos.  And it was really windy, as usual.  We stopped at a little artisan settlement at Nahuel Pan, which looked to be a pretty bleak existence.  And we said adios to our intrepid engine crew who did a magnificent job on his trip.  It is interesting how satellite communication has opened things up.  The remote homes have Direct TV dishes, and probably an internet connection as well.  And cell service is readily available in the more populated areas.  So integration into civilization continues.  Then it was a 300 km bus ride back to Bariloche. The town was a lot more lively on Thursday night than it was the day before the elections.  But for us, it is dinner and bed.

Our train today was delayed a bit due to a problem up the line with the regularly schedule Tren Patagonico.  But eventually we boarded the El Historico Tren a Vapor (Historic Steam Train) for a 38 mile ride from Bariloche to Perito Moreno.  The engine and three restored cars are the property of a preservation society, which gets credit for keeping these things in operating condition.  The engine was a 2-8-0 built in Scotland in 1912.  The cars are all wood, and built about the same time.  The dormitory car, rather misnamed, is very elegant, with a fireplace, kitchen and sleeping compartments.  It is more of a private or business car.  We did a couple of run-bys, arrived at the station, wyed the engine, and headed back.  Was there anything super special?  Well, it was neat train, and the crew was nice, but definitely not used to rail fans who wanted lots of run-by situations.  The food was good, though.  What more can I say about the enjoyable day.  For dinner tonight, I hope we aren't headed for barbeque or steak place.  These folks eat late (restaurants don't open until 8 PM) and they all eat meat - and lots of it.  Tomorrow should be interesting, as our internal air carrier, Aerolineas Argentina, is on strike.

 We generally blew off the morning today and headed out to the airport.  Aerolineas was flying and we flew one of their MD-80s south to El Calafate.  And the town was quite a surprise to me.  This is quite a tourist town, with a great downtown, lots of hotels, and quite a tourist industry. I managed to get some Christmas gifts resolved by power shopping.  We are staying at another hotel because our original rooms were damaged in a windstorm.  So we are in a five star place down the road.  Such is the luck of the draw.  As usual, the shorter the stay, the better the hotel.  Tomorrow, we start toward Chile.

I overslept, but only by a bit.  We got on board the buses and departed for Perito Moreno Glacier, which is a national park just outside of El Calafate.  True to the buildup, the place was pretty impressive, with a nice, blue ice wall.  It actually covers a footprint the size of Buenos Aires, and is one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world, moving some 30 meters a year. There wasn't as much calving as the one in Glacier Bay, Alaska, but we did see some.  Whether we got it on tape is another story, as it happens quickly, and without warning.  Just to get a perspective of this thing, the tiny, tiny dot on the water is a fairly good sized passenger ship.  From there, it was off through endless miles of high desert to the border with Chile, which is where we are now stuck.  Actually, we are still leaving Argentina, as the officials want to see all the passports, but only ten at a time.  So it's taking a while.  And that was just leaving Argentina.  Going into Chile was even more fun.  So here we are in a hotel just outside of Puerto Natales, Chile.  I'd like to see the town, but is a 7 km walk.  Maybe tomorrow we can do something.

The best description for today's weather would be "ugly."  We had rain, heavy winds and snow throughout most of the day.  We had to cross from Chile to Argentina - about a three hour process - to get to Rio Turbio, where we were supposed to find a steam tourist train running out of the coal mine.  However, even though the tour group started working on this over two years ago, the engine was still not ready due to the intransigence of either the engine owner, the railroad owner or someone else.  The steam engine would have been nice, as it was a little 2-10-2 built by Mitsubishi for the railroad.  But the engine was cold, the railcars were in various stages of rebuild, and we slopped around in the mud for the morning, shooting the scrap line, the static engine, and a narrow gauge coal train pulled by a Romanian diesel.  And we braved the cold and rain just to poke around a bit. Then of course, we headed back to Argentina and another three hour crossing.  The wind continues to blow.  We stopped in Puerto Natales for an instant, as our hotel is out of town, and had good light for a local cathedral.  We are supposed to be shuttled into town for dinner possibilities.  My laundry is not yet done.  The washer-woman will be the richest lady in town by tomorrow.

Today was long but really beautiful.  This is the view that greeted me when I awakened in my rather monastic cell at the hotel.  It seemed to bode well for the day.  First, we visited Cuevo del Milodon National Monument, which is a glacier carved cave.  It is so named for some of the giant sloth remains found in the cave and nearby area.  Then it was on to one of the most beautiful national parks in the world, Torres del Paines.  It is around 263,000 hectacres of unspoiled, undeveloped valleys, lakes, glaciers, and mountains.  Around every turn there is a new sight to be seen.  We saw plenty of guanacos, a small cameloid that looks like a llama, and rheas, the small ostrich like bird.  One thing that helped was the close proximity to the coast, so the cloud formations were ever changing hiding peaks, revealing them, and then making them disappear.  The lake system is extensive with huge lakes and waterfalls.  There are a several small hotels and restaurants in the park, and we dined at one of them, with jagged peaks in the background.  It was a very pretty day.  It was long, but beautiful.

Off we went this morning, in rain and clouds, to the border crossing with Chile, and then into Argentina.  The crossing was supposed to have been pre-arranged, to cut down our waiting time, but the guy that the tour guides made the deal with - took the day off.  So we still had to wait for an hour and a half in the snow.  But we did get through, and after a long bus ride, arrived at the steam museum in Rio Gallegos.  The place was more of a scrap yard than a museum, but they do have big plans to get one of the Mitsubishi's up and running.  Interestingly enough, the Rio Turbio line was originally named for Evita Peron, but once the military came to power, it was renamed.  The coal loading operations have been scrapped, with rusting shops, an old steam tug, and shops, in favor of a new, automated facility 30 km south of town.  After killing about 90 minutes there, where we did not shoot anything, rather to the dismay of the locals, we headed to the airport, where ominous weather threatens.  It could be an interesting flight.  Later.  The flight was not bad.  It was late, but smooth and we arrived in Ushuaia around 10 PM.  The city is a lot larger than I had anticipated, and looks quite upscale.  At least the part that we saw from the bus as we were shuttled to our outlying hotel.  So it was a late in.  Geographically, it looks a bit like Skagway, Alaska, with high mountains surrounding the water.  It could be dazzling on a clear day.

PANAMA CANAL RAILWAY - SEASON 7

We arrived late afternoon in Panama City, after a hop from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Miami, flying and waiting about 36 hours for the whole deal.  Oh yes, our carrier has partially redeemed itself in my eyes.  But they still made me pay for my bottle of wine. The flight was on a triple 7, and had seat screens and actual movies.  Quite a change from the flight down.  My advice is to fly a foreign flag carrier.  They seem to have better service.  But we are here, albeit tired. We already got lost trying to find the hotel and ended up in a less than wonderful part of town.  I paid a taxi driver to lead us to our home for the next four nights.  Four nights!  What a luxury.

Our contact, the operations manager for the Panama Canal Railway Company, met us at the hotel this morning and off we went.  The weather started out nice, but threatening clouds rolled in.  And it sort of rained here and there all day.  We did couple of scenic shots, one of Panama City, looking a bit like Chicago.  The railroad is a resurrection of the old Panama Railroad, which was built in the late 1800's.  In fact, it was instrumental as a trans-shipment point for the California 49er's and in helping to construct the canal, which opened in 1914.  The line was privatized in the late 1900's, with the Republic of Panama granting a 50 year concession lease.  The KCS Railroad and the MiJack Company rebuilt the operation in 2000, running containers and passengers from one side of the isthmus to the other.   It was not designed to compete with the canal traffic, but rather to enhance service.  The railroad was designed to provide a shipment hub service to the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.  While ships can lighten their loads and ship the excess containers across, mostly what is happening is that the railroad becomes a trans-shipment hub.  A Pacific or Atlantic ship will drop their load on their respective side, the containers are then sent across by rail, and loaded for various destinations on the other side.  So shippers can avoid the canal transit costs (currently around $350,000/transit) and use their ships more efficiently.  The line also carries tourist traffic and commuters, from Panama City to Colon and back.  We tried to get some shots of the Miraflores Locks, but with the security and tourists, it was impossible.  We did get shots of the trains passing with large ships in the background. All was going reasonably well, for a Sunday, but then things took a turn for the worse.  The crew got on a northbound train, with the intention that I would drive across to Colon and pick them up.  Then the trouble started.  The only road to Colon was closed.  So I was stuck on the south side, they were 46 miles away on the north side.  The next southbound train was supposed to bring them back, but somehow, the crew missed it.  So they were delayed for about two hours awaiting the next train.  On the plus side, we should have plenty of cab footage.  I think we will eat close to the hotel and turn in early.  We have to be out early tomorrow.

Yikes, yet another brutal day.  We headed out from the hotel at 6:30, intending to get the passenger station traffic for a 7:15 departure.  We immediately took a wrong turn, and ended up on the Bridge of the Americas.  Traffic into Panama City was blocked due to a traffic accident.  So we missed that shot.  We did get the train pulling out, but that was it.  Fortunately, the rest of the day went a bit better, with run-bys, interviews, and details here on the Corozal side.  We did get running shots, and the ships being unloaded at the ports, and stacks and stacks of containers.  We also investigated the Quantum Engineering train control system, which puts electronic fences around train blocks.  A train can play nicely within it's fence.  The dispatcher can gather data on the train movement, and watch the train in real time move across the line.  Turnouts can be remotely thrown, thus saving train movements, and operations are enhanced by the computer paying attention to the mundane, leaving the crew to more efficiently do their jobs.  We did get some passengers traffic arriving.  Tomorrow we'll go for the passenger traffic again.

As usual, the day started early, and once again, as usual, we got lost.  There is an interchange right outside the hotel, and we have taken every permutation of directions and exits.  And except for the final one, all have been wrong.  But we got to the station on time, and caught the passengers boarding for work in Colon.  The passengers cars are ally quite nice, with one ex-SP dome and 5 coaches.  All have been luxuriously appointed, complete with coffee service.  The ride is not cheap - $22 each way, but is preferable to the cross-isthmus traffic by car.  We ran into lots of rain in Colon, and judging by the streams, it wasn't the first rain storm in recent history.  The remnants of the some of the original railroad are still visible.  The roundhouse, and an occasional building can still be found.  One of the really impressive things about the canal zone, is the manner in which the infrastructure was built.  Close to 100 years old, things were built to last and last.  So you find 1914 buildings, transmission towers, water systems - all sorts of things that are still in use.  We shot at the shops, where we saw the original engine, and older GP-10, that was pretty much used to build this renovation.  Then it was in the trailing cab on the next southbound freight.  I tried to shoot more of the canal, and some of the ever present buzzards, but didn't really get a good shot as track speed was pretty fast.  We arrived back in Corozal in sunshine, the end of the shoot. After I drop the rental car, we can pack for home.  It seems like we left a long time ago, but it has only been three weeks.  It's been a lot of miles, but fun and informative.  And we met a great bunch of people and made new friends along the way.  But as Dorothy said, "There's no place like home."