History Boy
This time MSL’s ride location scout, History Boy Alfred Earnest, has found a real gem of a riding destination
A gem of a railway station to visit.
Ok you grown-ups, this is History Boy gold – an abandoned railway! Us Brits are no strangers to the Jungian conflict that comes with dismantled railways; the pain that so much effort in construction has now gone to waste, combined with the loin-tingling frissant of exploring a secret, abandoned place.
Righto, your next Pyrenees road trip needs to take in the route from Pau to Jaca, over on the western side of the mountains. Like any upland road this is a great route, but 100 years ago it was the scene of feverish activity as two teams, one Spanish one French, bridged, blasted and masonried their wayw into the mountains. We know that most European railways were built by 1900, but this Johnny come lately, the
Settle to Carlisle of Europe, was going to be something else. Naturally, like any railway that traverses a mountain range, the alignment followed the river valleys, the Aspe in France and the Aragon in Spain, but that barely made the task any easier. When you drive this road you MUST be the passenger because there is so much epic civil engineering to adore!
The line was the final piece in what was loosely designated the ‘Bordeaux to Zaragoza’ route and, until the channel tunnel opened, was the last great European railway project. Obviously, at the summit, the route plunged into what became known as the Somport Tunnel, a meaty five-miler blasted through merciless granite and unlike our cherished Box tunnel, on the GWR, unable to be assisted by pilot shafts (Editor’s note: The Box tunnel had 6 pilot shafts during construction so was actually being tunnelled at 14 faces simultaneously!). The line was started in 1912, in the last gasp of European perfection when all seemed possible and there was everything to live for. Naturally, the madness of WW1 put the project on hold, but there was a continuous alignment finished by 1920!
The project was hobbled at birth, not by stupefying topography that wouldn’t give up access easily, but instead by something far more infuriating since, like all the problems that blight our species, it was man-made…
Whilst most of Europe had embraced the British standard railway gauge of 4ft 8½ins (hurrah!), Spain had not. Weirdly, to this day, nobody really knows why. One rumour is that Franco-Iberian rivalry fostered such intense suspicion between the two empires that in 1844 when Queen Isabella II raised a Royal Commission to investigate which gauge Spain should adopt, the starting point was that it HAD to be different to France’s 4ft 8½ins! Thereby guaranteeing that in the event of a war, French rolling stock and locomotives could NEVER be used on Spanish rails!
Fast-forward to 1920 and the two railway networks tentatively met on the southern, Spanish side of the Somport Tunnel. Which brings us to the unbelievable, Canfranc station.
From the outset, it was always understood that there would be a point where the nettle of the clash of gauges would have to be grasped. Thus, high in the valleys (it became known as the Titanic of The Pyrenees!) was constructed a truly massive station at which every single passenger (and their luggage) disembarked and then boarded the waiting train of the other country. This was known as Canfranc station and when it was completed in 1928, laid claim to being the second largest terminus building in the world. Also, it may be the ONLY railway terminus that isn’t a cul-de-sac, but you can bet on the holy bones of St Hornby of Peco that no train ever did the ‘through’ journey from France to Spain! The station was 200 metres long so that two full-length express trains could be parked on either side of it for the transfers.
The station, and indeed the railway, was on borrowed time. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 heralded a worldwide recession and the poor old
Canfranc railway was chronically underused as trade slumped. No sooner had things picked up in the late thirties than the Spanish Civil War saw Franco close the line and then seal ‘his’ southern end of the tunnel to stop any pesky left-wingers sneaking through it. Once he had consolidated power in the early forties the line was re-opened as the Third Reich’s need for Spanish minerals kicked in. Actually, the principal goods flowing south were foodstuffs from the continent, the Spanish agricultural peasantry crushed by years of conflict and chaos.
The final story on the gauge farce (but fear not, all modern Spanish TGV services are ALL now built to 4ft 8½ins from new!) just might have been to the advantage of us Brits! And like so much of our self-identity, it comes from the events of WW2…
In 1940 Hitler was keen to capitalise on his dizzy run of successes and briefed Admiral Wilhelm Canaris to carry out prep work for a land-based invasion of Gibraltar. Canaris was the Reich’s special envoy to The Caudillo Franco and naturally, the concept, codenamed Operation Felix, could only thrive with massive Spanish support. Franco was lukewarm to such intimate collaboration, but Gibraltar may have been saved by other means – the railway gauge problem. General Rudolf Schmidt, charged with the military planning of Felix, was quickly made aware by his logistics corps that with ALL the war material planned to enter Spain by train (including the famous rail siege guns so beloved by the Germans), frankly, Felix was in trouble. To trans-ship every single item from French trains to Spanish trains compromised the project to such an extent that rendered it non-viable. So, as an English schoolboy I say: “Thank you Queen Isabella II, that decision in 1844 wasn’t so bad after all.”