Passengers of the Tren del Remembrance in one of the first class centennial carriages heading to San Antonio.sofia yanjari
The destination of the Chilean Elda Escobar's train ticket is the port of San Antonio, 110 kilometers west of Santiago.
However, once on board, the 88-year-old will take a journey from Central Station to her childhood.
This route marked the generations of the capital in the first half of the 20th century, who inaugurated the tourist railway to the beach.
Product of several years of state abandonment and the bus boom, the route stopped operating in the eighties, during the Pinochet dictatorship, when more than a third of the railways disappeared.
"These landscapes, these animals... she hadn't seen them since she was little," says an excited Escobar this Saturday with her gaze fixed on her window.
"Although before there was much more field, now everything is built",
The "Remembrance Train" was inaugurated 10 years ago with a tourist vocation.
Initially, it only operated once a month during the summer (January and February in Chile), but the great demand has led to it operating every Saturday of the year and, when all 460 seats are sold -as happened this weekend -, add Sunday.
They only sell round-trip tickets and the values range between 35 and 55 dollars, depending largely on the age of the wagon that is chosen, which date from 1923 to 1966.
Passengers Luis González, 77, and Cristina Bórquez, 60. Sofia Yanjari
The Chilean Association for the Conservation of Railway Heritage initially invested $100,000 to recover and restore these historic carriages on the Santiago-San Antonio route which, thanks to the EFE Group (State Railway Company), have returned to transit.
Of those built in 1923, only the first class remain, with leatherette seats covered in burgundy corduroy, wood-framed windows with period stained glass above, and tulip lamps hanging from the ceiling.
The bulk of the traveler combs gray hair.
Several wear masks and this walk is the first they have done since the pandemic.
Among the dozens of people consulted for this report, the reason why they decided to undertake the trip was repeated over and over again: my son or daughter gave me the ticket.
Some go as a couple or with the person who gave them the ticket, and others -perhaps the most enthusiastic- take the tour with their little grandchildren.
"My daughter had never traveled by train, it's nice to do something for the first time with her as an adult";
"My parents took me every summer to the beach on this route, perhaps in this same wagon";
“My grandchildren dreamed of getting on a train.
And I also";
“We were so anxious yesterday like children”, commented the passengers with the harvests of walnut, orange or olive trees as a backdrop.
The testimonies are consistent with the figures from EFE, which show that the average age of the traveler is between 55 and 65 years (67% women, 33% men), but that of those who buy the tickets is between 35 and 45 years. , implying that they give them away to their elders.
View of the exterior of the "Train of Remembrance". Sofia Yanjari
Chile, the longest country in the world, with 4,300 kilometers of coastline, has a railway coverage of some 800 kilometers and various projects are underway to extend the tracks.
Something that is repeated among the nostalgic is how the field has faded from its greenery.
And it is that in the three and a half hours of travel (by bus it is 1 hour and 40 minutes), several of the crises that plague the country slip through the window, such as the 13-year drought or the housing crisis.
Especially at the exit of Santiago, you can see settlements or mattresses, blankets and garbage abandoned on the shore of the railway line.
The crudest images are contrasted with the effect produced by the passage of the train through the towns.
From the locomotive the entrance is notified with bells and horns that stop any Saturday activity.
People brake their bikes, put down the soccer ball in the middle of the game or ignore the gridiron.
It seems that there are only two ways to react: either quickly take out the mobile to capture the passage of the eight carriages or greet the passengers effusively with their hands.
It doesn't matter how old you are or if behind you is a house built with pallets or a farm.
Everyone's face lights up as if an old friend has dropped in unexpectedly or they've just received some good news.
Passengers enjoy the trip on the Train of Remembrance, a railway that is close to 100 years old, and its wagons still retain their aesthetics.
January 21, Santiago de Chile, Chilesofia yanjari
The 60-year-old driver Hugo Salgado, who sees everything from the front row, finds the greeting ritual “priceless”.
“People fall in love with trains.
Car drivers roll down the windows, honk their horns, people run to take photos… ”, he describes.
Salgado, a graduate in mathematics, got into the story in 1984. EFE opened applications for "mobilization and traction" and he, without knowing what that meant, was one of the 75 selected among the 4,000 applicants.
“When they put me to drive trains for the first time, I got lost in infinity”, he points out in the locomotive.
Salgado's passion faced the great railway crisis of the eighties.
“It was very sad.
Every day new services were eliminated, closing branches, cutting resources.
We worked in extremely poor conditions, there was no windshield wiper, no light in the cabin, and the locomotives were raining... I think EFE was maintained by the romanticism of its employees.
They worked 15-20 hours, they were paid 8 and they did not leave the ship, ”he points out.
When he had been transporting passengers for 11 years, cargo transportation was privatized and Salgado moved to that area in the Transap company.
“He was very tempting on a monetary level,” he admits.
Due to the shortage of EFE locomotives for passenger transfers, the state company contracted the services of Transap and Salgado returned to take tourists.
Hugo Salgado, train engineer Sofia Yanjari
That romanticism that Salgado talks about disappeared for several decades, according to his vision, but he assures that he has seen it reborn in recent years.
The turning point is aligned with the National Railway Development Plan, announced in 2019 by then-President Sebastián Piñera, and which the Government of Gabriel Boric is also strongly promoting.
The goal for 2027 is to triple the number of passengers carried, to 150 million, and double the cargo, to 20 million tons.
Of the various railway projects in the pipeline, the last one announced by Boric is the long-awaited Santiago-Valparaíso train, a proposal that has not been without controversy since the layout was defined two weeks ago.
Travelers on the Train of Remembrance not only hope that it will happen, but hopefully they will be alive when it happens.
"The train is the only means of transport capable of uniting a country," says an octogenarian after an intense day of walking.
The passengers boarded the train at 9 in the morning, had breakfast and sang along with a musician who was singing classics.
Around noon they ended up in San Antonio, where they had four hours to walk around before returning to the train.
The return is silent, most sleep exhausted to the beat of the creak of the steel rails.
But somehow the movement of the train rocks them and, like the children who once were in those carriages, they sleep peacefully.
A girl looks out the window from the train.sofia yanjari
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