railography photo galleries : Cuba : sugar mills - narrow gauge : 96-036-05 : (5 of 6)

Always Count Your Engines

We arrived at Rafael Freyre to find a jeepload of despondent gricers at the overlook near the shed, "There's been a lot of rain, there's no trains today and the rest of our group are at the beach" we were told. Indeed the picture did look grim as there were no locos in steam. We could see five of the seven 2-8-0s and four of the five diesels but where were the others? The gloom merchants were left to wallow in their own self pity while we went Baldwin hunting.

The missing diesel was found at Progresso, heading back to the mill with loads from the Uvilla direction. The crew told us that there was another train working Luciano and Teche and it was steam! Sure enough, by the time we got back to Luciano, 1386 was there, waiting to work back to the mill with a good sized train.

On our previous trip, we had spent 7 days at Rafael Freyre and still failed to get a decent shot from the big hill near Barjay. Here we were again, on our first afternoon at Rafael, with most of the other gricers in the area sitting on the beach, brilliant sunshine and a steam worked train expected at just the right time.

Something had to go wrong, didn't it? Not this time, 1386 rolled past at 15:40 in perfect light, and very nice it looked too.