h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello
This is not fan maiI, although I very much appreciate Michael’s work. I don’t know if he ever finds the time to take a look into this chatroom or if there is another way to get this mail to him - or whether it would be better just to throw a bottle into the sea and hope he picks it up from a passing dhow.

What spurred me to try to contact him came from re-reading his delightful chapter “Confessions of a Train-Spotter” in the Book “Great Railway Journeys of the World. One of his comments referred to railway relics “I have a feeling that a complete sub-network of steam railways is gradually being built up complete with its own lines, locomotives, signal boxes, signals, uniforms and manual level crossing gates, just waiting for the day when passengers finally rebel against the latest fare rise and steam returns triumphant” may be more prophetic than he imagines - well at least the last bit.

I don’t know if he has heard of the Argentinean engineer, L.D. Porta, who died in 2003. He was a follower and friend of the famous French steam locomotive engineer, André Chapelon. In the face of enormous prejudice and the might of General Motors, Porta continued to keep steam technology abreast of all the others. Right from the beginning in the late 1940s he was concerned with cutting down pollution, “ambiential contamination” as he called it. Indeed from being the smoke-belching polluting beast we knew in the 1950s, it has become transformed into the cleanest of all technologies with very low emissions. Superficially his locomotives looke rather like the old ones, but appearances belie revolutionary improvements.

Porta has a small number of successors working today, extremely competent engineers well-versed in his methods. Their main field of action is in tourist railways, usually private companies, who demand engineers producing efficient machines rather than devoted enthusiasts maintaining historical relics.
I am in regular contact with one of these engineers, Shaun McMahon, working for TRANEX TURISMO as consulting Engineer for the RFIRT/Transoceanic Railway Project. This is based at the Patagonian mining town of Rio Turbio. The RFIRT was a narrow-gauge coal-carrying line on which Porta carried out most of his developments, working in a fragile environment. He developed very efficient, clean and powerful locomotives handling trains of over 1500 tonnes on a gauge equivalent to the Welsh narrow gauge lines, burning very poor Rio Turbio coal. The new Transoceanic will initially be a tourist line. It will be linked with a Chilean line over the border which will involve the building of a new section. But there are also serious ambitions to revive the coal traffic.

The intention is to make Rio Turbio a sort of steam laboratory with projects for steam buses, boats, trucks, etc. (these developments are also taking place in various parts of the world).

This is not pie in the sky. From 1999 to 2004 Shaun McMahon was Technical & Technical Projects Manager for the the very successful “End of the World Railway” based in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, resigning the post to take up the present one. All of the Rio Turbio projects are well worked out and all have a very good chance of being realised provided that there is proper support. And with the energy crisis we are going through at present, practical solutions, rather than good intentions are capital.

I am writing this mail on my own initiative. I think it is important for us that someone in the public eye at least should be aware of what is going on. I can send more information if Michael interested, and I am certain that Shaun McMahon will be more than happy to complete the picture.

One more thing, in October 2006, they intend to organise an international conference at Rio Turbio. It would be a good thing if there were some media presence at that time.

Best wishes,
John Wright

Hello John, or should that be ironLefti? I'm sorry, it may be me being a little thick, but I'm not too sure who this Michael is that you are referring to.

Anyway, I've just popped over to your Space & left you a welcome to h2g2.

Hope to speak to you soon

Rgds

Granny