Little Trains to Faraway Places

7, Switchbacks on the Devil’s Nose (1989)

7 switchbacks on the devil’s nose T hroaty, syncopated sounds of steam-locomotive exhaust whispered in a predawn blackness that was just softening to blue, and pinpoints of yellow light danced like fireflies. On that warm June morning in Duran, the seaport terminus of Ecuador’s narrow-gauge Guayaquil & Quito Railway, those fireflies were Adlake kerosene lanterns wielded by brakeman and conductor, bobbing instructions to the engineer. Backing his train, he leaned from the cab of No. 11, a trim, fetching MogultypesteamerbuiltintheUnitedStatesbytheBaldwinLocomotiveCompany in 1900. In front of me stood a foursquare, concrete station of indeterminate age, ringed with red and blue stripes no doubt intended to lend an air of modernity ; through an open window, in contrast, I heard the chatter of Morse code, still the communication lifeline of the G&Q. Behind me, propped up by a forest of thick bamboo poles, was the original wooden station, now sagging and derelict. A final flurry of fireflies brought No. 11’s train to a halt at the station platform . Two wooden clerestory coaches—“primera clase,” according to gold lettering on the cars’ red sides—and a round-roofed baggage-mail car (“equi- • Book 1.indb 81 2/16/10 8:49:14 AM l i t t l e t r a i n s t o f a r a w a y p l a c e s . 82 . paje/correo”)madeupthemodesttrain.Thelocomotive(incommonwiththe rest of the G&Q’s fleet of Baldwin steamers and Alco diesels), the style of the rolling stock, the lanterns, even the somewhat incongruous round can-style hats worn by conductor and brakeman, all were ghosts of traditional North American railroading. For while South America’s railroads most often had beenpromotedbyEuropeans,the281-mile,3-foot6-inch-gaugeGuayaquil& Quito had been completed in 1908 by American interests, concluding some 37 years of often-interrupted construction. No. 11’sconsist wasa Trains Unlimited, Toursspecial, bound thatday for the little town of Alausi, high in the Andes—a 12-hour, 89-mile trek, up sustained grades reaching 5.6 percent through a double switchback and around twin horseshoe curves. By evening I’d have traveled from sea level to 7,700 feet—and from 1989 back to the turn of the last century. Both aspects of the journey would be striking, particularly since that all-day ascent had implications more complex than the merely geographic. With resonances of Ernest Hemingway’s mountains and lowlands as moral metaphor, the passage would lift me and a small band of13 likeminded fellow travelers from the squalid, rank, teeming, tropical poverty of Guayaquil to the cool Andean freshness of Alausi. As the early morning brightened to gray, No. 11 steamed quietly, air pumps panting irregularly, like a bad heart, generator whining to keep headlight and cab lights a bright yellow-white. The surrounding streetscape that dawn focused out of the darkness was uninspiring. Duran, a “suburb” across the Rio Guayas from Guayaquil, made that gritty city look good, which was no mean feat. Guayaquil is Ecuador’s chief commercial city and seaport, notable in the late 1980s as home of perhaps the world’s most active pirate bands, who routinely boarded and robbed container ships and other vessels entering the harbor. A highway bridge linked the city to Duran, but there was also a ferry, somehow truer to the karma of the place. Our group had used the ferry a few days earlier for a visit to the G&Q’s locomotive and car shops in Duran. We had boarded the Azuay under the rusty corrugated roof of the ferry shed in Guayaquil. Slums clung to the hills; some fine old buildings stood decaying;the Maria, asmallcoastwisefreighter,listed forlornly in the brown harbor water. The smell of burning garbage hung in the air. Looking incongruously prosperous, a sleek jet knifed upward through the murk from the international airport where our Ladeco flight from Miami had set us down earlier in the day. With the raspy roar of diesels, the crowded ferry beat eastward across the river. In a cage at the stern, the engineer slumped on his bench, a bare foot propped up on a table next to the controls. Shrill horn blasts from the wheelBook 1.indb 82 2/16/10 8:49:15 AM s w i t c h b a c k s o n t h e d e v i l ’ s n o s e . 83 . house gave him his instructions...