I have a little trouble in deciding whether to submit this post to the “International Transport”, or “Railway History & Nostalgia”, sub-forum. Have opted for the former, it being essentially about “foreigners in foreign parts”: no doubt the mods will move it if they see that as appropriate.
Concerns a book recently come upon totally by chance: ”Yankee” ‘s Wander World, by Irving and Electa Johnson. The book chronicles, “first-person”, a round-the-world sailing-ship voyage by a US married couple, in the position of being able to be “professional sailing enthusiasts”, with a young US crew, in 1947 – 49.
Book’s railway content is IMO “small, but potentially fascinating”, considering the time in history at which the cruise was carried out. Various rail-interesting as of nearly seventy years ago, points called in at, with some rail travelling done by the intrepid voyagers.
“ The ship (Yankee) which made the trip” was acquired by the authors in Britain: a couple of early chapters are based in Britain in 1947, but there’s no mention of railways in Britain then. The authors sailed her in the summer of 1947, with a “scratch crew”, to get her across the Atlantic to their base at Gloucester, Massachusetts – whence their true project, was to set out. Mention is made of a brief and pleasant call during this run, at Bermuda; but not of Bermuda’s strange and short-lived 4ft-8-and-a-half-inch gauge railway, essentially all-railmotor-operated, which ran between 1931, and May 1948. The delivery crew would have had (given any interest therein) a chance to witness the Bermuda Railway in summer 1947: the “last knockings” of the ship’s “proper” voyage in spring 1949, though calling at Bermuda, would have been too late “for such for such”.
Yankee’s cruise proper, from late 1947 to early 1949, went from Massachusetts basically in a westerly direction via the Panama Canal, through the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, calling with leisurely time to explore, at sundry lands thereon / therein. It’s the Ecuador “exploring” which chiefly prompts this post: otherwise, admittedly, the voyagers’ rail-travellings are few, and more of the post is in the line of “what might have happened, but didn’t”.
The ship was moored at Salinas – Ecuador’s westernmost point. The intrepid voyagers desired to, and did, travel to the country’s capital Quito, high in the Andes. So doing, got them – had they been gricers – a covetable prize: they were in the fairly brief time-window of being able to travel on Ecuador’s Ferrocarril a la Costa: the country’s only, ever, 4ft-8-and-a-half-inch gauge line, cross-country from Salinas to the port, a fair way up a bay / estuary, of Guyaquil. The FC de la Costa opened in its entirety in 1936, and was abandoned in 1954.
Quoting from the book: “[from] the tiny station [at Salinas] our first conveyance, an autocarril, was a bus on tracks and it scooted precariously over the bone-dry countryside where, they told us, they had had no rain of any consequence for eight years. Its stops were enlivened by the people who scrambled aboard selling cookies, fruits, and baskets. Each stop added more passengers. There is no limit to the number one autocarril will accommodate, so they just keep piling in, drawn on this particular day to a big soccer game in Guayaquil. We were glad we were in a country warm enough to keep the windows open.
Between our 9.00 P.M. arrival in Guayaquil and the 3.00 A.M. departure, which all travellers to Quito must make... we ... got some sleep... The last of the crew seemed to be dressing as they ran for the 3.30 ferry across the Guayas River to the northbound railroad station. At first the train looked rather good to us, but we had no affection left for it eight hours later.
The railroad to Quito over the Andes is an engineering triumph and was built in 1909 by Americans and British. It not only climbs so steeply that the downward train wears out its brakes each trip, but at one point, up by the Big Nose [presumably the “Devil’s Nose” known of by us later railfans] the grade is such that the only way to make it is by switchbacks. So the train zigzags up that part of the mountain, half of the time going ahead, half of the time backing. Since we were in the last car, we found the view out the rear on some of those backwards trips rather terrifying, but just when it seemed as though we would back out into space, the train would start forward on the next rise. The steepest part of the trip was the best. The air was cool and fresh; Indians in bright red serapes thronged the little stations or travelled on top of the train where fares are lowest. Brown hills were freshened with patches of grazing green; occasional plumy eucalyptus trees stood in line between the fields; distant mountains loomed grandly.
Early in the afternoon at Rio Bamba we were advised to desert the train and try to get to Quito by bus, which was faster. From here on the train is said to get slower and slower and does not reach Quito until sometime between ten and midnight. At first the change to the bus seemed refreshing. That illusion almost immediately passed, however, for the bus turned out to be loose-jointed and the seats hard. [Follows a paragraph on this basic “frying-pan-into-the-fire” theme.] We looked back to our 3.30 A.M. start from Guayaquil as into last week. But about 8.30 we caught sight of the lights of Quito, cheered with all we had left in us...”
They loved Quito, as from the following morning; but after time spent there, “in contrast to our arduous eighteen-hour trip to Quito from Guayaquil, we flew the return journey...in an hour and a half. Air travel is obviously the most pleasant and easy way to get around South America, but the seaborne Yankee will continue to stop at small coastal ports from which we will make our strenuous but often rewarding way into the interior.” Not again, sadly, by rail in such graphically-recounted detail.
Many months later, the voyagers spent a prolonged shore leave in Thailand, based in Bangkok. Trips inland were made to Ayudhya; and to Chiengmai – in both cases outward by rail, returning by different means of transport (river, and air, respectively). Rail journeys glossed-over except for, re the run to Chiengmai, “Then something happened to the railroad track and we were fourteen hours late ! But we enjoyed the scenery from the train: low rice fields, swollen rivers with the usual boat life, tiny inland towns. “
The travellers called a little later, at Java: moored at Tanjong Priok, the port for Jakarta – said city then, in the last years of Dutch rule, Batavia. Journeys were involved between T.P. and the capital itself, on what is described as “the little train” – “little”, I presume, because of its 3’6” gauge, and – if I have things correctly – in those times, local lines around the capital were electric suburban-wise. One particular guy in the crew did the most travelling by train between T.P. and the capital, and “the first time he was asked for a ticket or a paper he fumbled in his pocket and brought out a membership card in the National Model Railroad Association. The conductor spotted the railroad design on it and considered it a pass, so to Eric’s amazement he found himself riding to Batavia free. The Association card continued to work all the while we were in port.”
At that time, in Indonesia’s war of independence against the Netherlands, things in the immediate area of the capital were fairly tranquil; and a little later on, the travellers spent time on the peaceable but always railway-less island of Bali.
Further on in the voyage, around the turn of the year 1948 / 49, time ashore was spent at Beira in then-Portuguese Mozambique. The travellers had a contact who was a keen and expert big-game hunter – just his hobby: he worked for the then Beira Railway (this, sadly, not expanded on). They took a road trip up-country with him, for big game (to watch, not to kill – the few hunters among the crew, contented themselves with guinea-fowl-sized game birds). Next port of call, for a longish stay, Cape Town. The voyagers’ South African friends and acquaintances were of sufficient affluence that they showed them large stretches of South Africa, by more modern and convenient modes of transport, than rail.
After that, it was rather rapidly back home up the Atlantic Ocean to Gloucester, Mass. – with a call-in at Paramaribo, Surinam – but not including a trip by steam tram into the interior...
Over and above the “railwaying and non-railwaying” aspect – I found the book a delightful, highly interesting, and basically upbeat read; and from and about a time, still within living memory of many, which nonetheless sometimes feels as distant and different as ancient Greece and Rome.