See the rail Spain
On a 3,000-mile adventure, Tom Chesshyre explores Spain slowly by rail, indulging in a little Spanish trainspotting along the way
WITH a month to spare and the tracks south from St Pancras clear ahead, it was a sheer pleasure – in the summer before Covid – to set forth down the long, twisting lines to Spain.
After a sleeper from Paris to Toulouse, my train creaked into Figueres (Salvador Dali’s hometown) and so began a month-long jaunt around Spain, taking regional services to sleepy, out-of-the-way spots far from the tourist hordes of the Costas or the Canary and Balearic Islands.
Travelling in a big wobbly ‘S’, the tracks led northwest to Santiago de Compostela, cut south via Madrid to baking-hot Extremadura, then east to Valencia and south again to the coast, through desert to Granada and on to Seville – 3,000 miles on 52 rides.
No trains were booked (I used the app of Renfe, the state-owned railway, or bought tickets at stations). No accommodation either (the internet also helped with that). The only requirement? A sense of adventure.
In this extract from my resulting travel book, Slow Trains Around Spain, my carriage rattles along the coast into Vilanova i la Geltru in Catalonia, where a museum for all lovers of Spanish trains is to be found. It is a half-hour journey from Barcelona to Vilanova i la Geltrú in a busy carriage with a cluster of exhausted-looking party people who, on this Saturday morning, appear to have been up all night.
A woman sitting opposite with her legs slung over her friend’s lap is talking about a man they met the previous evening: “I wonder: can he even remember what he said?”
A busker plays Can’t Help Falling in Love on a recorder. Waves break on the shore.
The train from Barcelona has a relaxed, let-it-allhang-out vibe.
We pull into a grand station with arched windows and rows of pink flowers: Vilanova i la Geltrú.
The reason I have come to this often-overlooked town south of Barcelona is the Catalonia Railway Museum, by the tracks.
Forget Santiago de Compostela, this is the place of pilgrimage for train lovers in Spain; well, one of them, along with the Museo del Ferrocarril de Madrid.
I enter a shed where the old steam locomotives are kept – and what a treat for the Spanish rail enthusiast (entusiasta del ferrocarril) lies in store.
Locomotive 120-2112 MZA 168, otherwise known as ‘Martello’, dates from 1854 and is the oldest surviving loco in Spain, once with a heady top speed of 38mph, complete with a jolly red fender and a shiny brass chimney.
Nearby is a perfectly polished wooden carriage from 1878; next to this, an automotor diesel from 1935 that could power itself ‘like a bus on iron rails’; further on still, leaping backward again, a replica of Spain’s first locomotive from 1848, painted green and looking sleek. Just as I am thinking to myself: what a good little museum, worth the trip, I have made an effort and improved my Spanish train knowledge, I enter a back yard with 20 locomotives in a circle.
This is some kind of loco heaven – as though I have stepped into a steam train dream.
Rail enthusiasts, I can confidently say, will greatly enjoy the final part of the Catalonia Railway Museum.
Engine after engine stares down, gleaming and looking ready to hurtle along the tracks. Most are steam-powered, with art deco stripes and painted names: Virgen de Begoña, Virgen de Covadonga, Virgen de la Bien Aparecida.
The Spanish word for “crazy” is of course loco. Here, should anyone wish to allow themselves, you may quietly go loco over locos.
I take a picture, all alone by the shiny engines. Then, Spanish trainspotting complete, I stroll into town, where a festival has just begun.
This is Spain, after all… there’s usually a party waiting somewhere at the end of the tracks.
■ Slow Trains Around Spain: A 3,000-Mile Adventure on 52 Rides, by Tom Chesshyre, £16.99 (published by Summersdale)