Little Trains to Faraway Places

13. Through Mallorca’s Mountains (1998)

13 he railway carriage was an heirloom, more than half a century old, pantograph-topped, with a wooden exterior. A pair of prominent, bug-eyed headlights looked as if they’d been borrowed from a racy automobile of the same period. Inside, our small first-class section was comfortable as an old shoe, although the seats—12 in all—were leatherette rather than leather, compromising the simile. The windows were open, and warm Mediterranean air wafted in. The wood worked and creaked as this motor car led its consist—El Tren de Sóller—back and forth through a slalom course of curves. Many years before I made this ride, in 1978, I’d discovered a priceless narrow-gaugerailroad—Alaska’sWhitePass&Yukon(seechapter 2)—more or less serendipitously while voyaging on a classic ship, Canadian Pacific’s Princess Patricia, the main focus of that journey. The same good luck had occurred again, 20 years later, as Laurel and I sailed around the Mediterranean on another favorite ship of ours. Then called the SS Rembrandt and operating under the Premier Cruises house flag, it had entered service in 1959 as Holland America Line’s SS Rotterdam, one of the last true ocean liners. That summer 1998 cruise brought us to Palma, the port and major city on the island of Mallorca, or Majorca, off the coast of Spain, just across the T through mallorca’s mountains • Book 1.indb 145 2/16/10 8:50:51 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 . 146 . Balearic Sea from Barcelona. There I discovered El Tren de Sóller, the train from Palma to Sóller, the island’s main tourist draw. It turned out to be an enchantinglytraditionalelectric -poweredrailway,anidealmatchfortheequally traditionalRembrandt.Aone-wayrideonthistrain,whichhadbecomepopular with tourists for its scenic route and the antiquity of its cars (and thus had thrived in spite of the highway tunnel that had been bored through the mountains over which the railway climbed), was included as part of a bus tour offered as a shore excursion to the ship’s passengers. However, we chose to take the regular service train on our own, round-trip. The Ferrocarril de Sóller, as the railroad is formally known, is a 3-footgauge , 17-mile line that runs from Palma de Mallorca across the island to the seaside resort town of Sóller. Originally powered by a trio of steam locomotives —named Sóller, Palma, and Buñola (this last an intermediate stop along the line)—the railroad was completed in 1912 with the primary objective of getting produce from the Sóller region to Palma and then electrified in 1929. Thefourhandsomewooden-bodiedmotorcarsstillinusehadbeenbuiltthat year in Zaragoza, along the river Ebro on the Spanish mainland, with Brill trucks and Siemens-Schuckert electrical equipment. The wooden trailers are of a similar vintage. In Palma, we walked from the pier through the labyrinthine streets of the old city and across the Plaça Espanya to the railroad’s ornate brick-andconcrete station, stately with its arched windows. Its manicured lawn, palmshaded , was enclosed and gated with iron grillwork. The gate’s tall entrance pillars, capped with round, frosted, illuminated globes, were bridged by an archedsigninArtNouveaulettersreading“FerrocarrildeSóller.”Vividfloweringvinesprovidedacolorfulbackdroptothestation ’ssingletrack.(Farless fetching was the adjacent station for the Serveis Ferroviaris de Mallorca, a workaday 18-mile meter-gauge line that operates modern cars to Inca, in the center of the island.) We sat on a bench in the cool shade of wide eaves overhanging the Ferrocarril de Sóller platform as a crowd gathered to board our train. We had opted to travel first-class (only 545 pesos as opposed to 380 for second-class) so, as departure neared, we settled into the forward compartment of the motor car, the only first-class accomodation. To the rear of the car, beyond the toilet, was a second-class section fitted with slatted wooden seats, and trailers provided additional second-class space. When the platform clock read exactly 10:40, the stationmaster rang his bell, the guard blew his cornucopia-shaped horn, and our train lurched into motionwiththesatisfyingwhineoftractionmotorsandthesquealofpeanutvendorwhistle .WeslippedoutofPalmawithamodestbitof“streetrunning” and then the traverse of the urban stew of light industry and trashed and Book 1.indb 146 2/16/10 8:50:51 AM T h r o u g h M a l l...