(Belated) Photo of the Week: 2/20/11

Normally Steven would have done this post, as he is usually the one who takes care of the Photo of the Week.  He has a better eye for that stuff anyway, being more of a photographer than I am.  I take pictures, but I do not ever promise to take good ones.  Following that promise, I do not promise that today's photo will be a particular good or beautiful photo.  But I hope it will at least be interesting, and maybe even a little unusual.

The photo I have chosen to share is one I took just over a year ago.  January 2009 found me on a cruise in the Caribbean.  It probably will not surprise anyone that I took the train to Fort Lauderdale to meet the ship.  Once on the cruise, we made ports of call in the Bahamas, Aruba, Curacao, Panama, and Costa Rica.  In Panama and Costa Rica, some of the shore excursions offered train rides.  Of course, I was excited to experience the railroads in Central America.  In Panama, I chose to experience the engineering marvel that is the Panama Canal instead of riding the train.  To make up for missing the Panama Canal Railroad, I decided that a train ride was in order for the Costa Rica port of call.

The train was operated by INCOFER, which is an abbreviation for Instituto Costarricense de Ferrocarriles, which simply translates to the Costa Rican Institution of Railroads.  That is their national rail operator.  They primarily operate freight trains, on a 3-foot 6-inch gauge system.  They operate regular passenger trains near the nation's capital of San José.  Beyond that, they operate freight trains and occasional chartered passenger trains, such as the one I got to ride.  We rode primarily along the coast, near Puerto Limón.  During the trip, the train came to a stop and we were allowed to get out on the beach and take pictures.  Of course, I did take pictures of the Caribbean Sea, but I also turned around and took the opportunity to snap a few photos of the train.  Here is my favorite of the bunch:

This is the head end of the train.  As you can see, I was about the only person who turned the camera around.  In fact, not a lot of people even got off the train.  It was hot and humid, and I think a lot of people were content to just keep sitting!  The locomotive is a General Electric U6B.  There were two varieties of passenger cars.  The one in the picture was built in 1960, in Tokyo.  The first two cars were this type.  The rear two cars were much older and even had open end platforms.  The train certainly had no air conditioning, and had no electricity.  There were bathrooms on board, but we were asked to use those only in an emergency.  They were such that when you opened the toilet lid, you could see the rail beneath the car!  Passing from one car to the next was possible, although slightly treacherous while underway.  There were no diaphragms or hand holds between cars.  In fact, there was even a gap between cars, so you had to step over the couplers to get to the next car.


The whole operation was very casual compared to what we are accustomed to in the United States.  We left from a very small town called La Peña.  There is no station in town, so the train had pulled up along side a dirt road.  We stepped off our bus there and climbed aboard the train.  Once aboard, most people chose to open the windows, if they were not already open.  As we rode along, there was a tour guide on the car who gave us information about the area.  The beach stop was a spur of the moment decision, and was in an area where there was only a single main track.  There were no signals where we were, and switches were all the hand throw variety.  All operations were coordinated via radio.  The beach stop ended suddenly as the train crew heard on the radio that there was a faster freight approaching from behind us, and we had to scramble to find a siding and get out of that train's way.  Our journey ended about 16 miles later, in Moin.  It certainly was a unique experience.

The rest of the photos are viewable on our Facebook page.