Railways in Cuba

Among other cities with links to Havana (west) and Santiago de Cuba (east).  Railways of Cuba (FCC) are more formally the National Railways of Cuba. 

The Cuban state enterprise is dedicated to the transport of passengers and goods throughout the island.  Railways in Cuba uses a gauge of 1435mm (standard gauge) extending from Guane (province of Pinar del Rio), in the westernmost part of the island, to Guantanamo Bay in the east.

Most of the 4226 miles are covered by diesel locomotives but only 240km are electrified. The train logo (the “French train”) is composed of twelve wagons, and makes trips between Havana and Santiago de Cuba (thus crossing the country). 

The “Hershey” is an electric train travelling from Havana to Matanzas, named because it was originally built by the Hershey’s company to facilitate the transport of workers (commuting) and goods (after that company had been purchased sugar plantations in 1916 near the second city).

History

The railway history of Cuba officially began on October 12^th 1834, when King Ferdinand VII of Spain approved the construction of the first line.  On November 19^th 1837, the Railway Company of Havana opened the line 27.5 kilometers from the capital towards Cuban Bejucal.  This was the first steam railroad in Latin America. Two years later, in late 1839, it was extended to 44.5km, with the addition of an additional stretch of 17km, which reached the town of Guines.

Meanwhile in 1836, Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros built a rail service called Railroad to Nuevitas Camaguey Camaguey (Puerto Principe).   In December 1843 the towns of San Felipe and Batabano were added to the rail network.  The new extensions were 17km of roads added in 1847, 21km in 1848 and in 1849 another 21km (i.e. over a period of 15 years they built about 100km of track).

The city of Havana had its first tram (called Urban Rail Havana) on February 3^rd 1859. Several decades later, in 1924 they changed the name to Consolidated Railroads of Cuba, due to a previous dispute between the company of the same name and Cuba Railroad.
Other railway companies that were formed and merged during the 1920s were:

Between 1940 and 1959 the Cuban railway system was disrupted due to fuel shortages during and after the Second World War.  During those 20 years they were replaced by buses to transport both passengers and cargo.

The destruction of the armored train by the dictator Fulgencio Batista during the revolutionaries of the battle of Santa Clara in December 1958 is one of the most important milestones of the Cuban Revolution. After the triumph of the latter in 1959, the new government led by Fidel Castro created the National Railways of Cuba, to nationalize the private sector and unify the public.

Minaz, the company, meanwhile, continued to operate a separate line for the transport of sugar (hence its name).  After the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, it became more difficult for the Castro regime to acquire new rolling stock (locomotives, wagons and spare parts), due to the recently imposed U.S. embargo against Cuba (the “blockade” by the government Cuban). However, between 1963 and 1966, British Rail has helped the island to get new locomotives.
Due to the stage and then again to the conditions it faced, Cuba had to stop buying trains and parts of the Western bloc countries from going to buy some nations of the then Eastern Bloc, from the Yugoslav Federation of Marshal Josip “Tito” Broz.   Following the radicalization of the Communist regime of Fidel Castro during the 1960s,

Cuba in 1972 was finally integrated into the Comecon (the economic bloc that essentially comprised of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries behind the Iron Curtain call).  This new trade-economic status would allow the island to buy products (including machinery railway) on favorable terms, without necessarily having to pay in hard currency for them in international markets. However, this type of exchange ended abruptly after the collapse of the USSR.

In recent years, the Cuban government have been able to acquire locomotives from “friendly” countries, while U.S. allies are not affected by the embargo (though the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 was also intended to have an affect).

For example:
Five RSC18 type locomotives were sent from Canada.   Nine additional electric locomotives were purchased from Ferrocarrils of the Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC), the railway network of the Catalan government in Spain.   Also, since 2000, Cuban roads have been gradually improving, from adquisision of second-hand equipment.  There are increasingly importing more vehicles in that category, from some Western countries, Canada, Mexico and some European nations.

At present, many of the trains are diesel and only a handful steam locomotives remain for the sugar and tourism industries.  Since entering the 1990s and after the disintegration of of the Soviet Union in late 1991, China became one of the leading providers of rail wagons to Cuba.  In 2006, China sent 12 new locomotives (type DF7G-C, 2,500 hp). French SNCF has also sold some of their old cars to Cubans.

Recent developments
On September 25^th 2007, in part because of the alliance between the governments of Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro, the investors of the Bank of Venezuela for the Socio-Economic Development (BANDES) reached an agreement with officials from Cuba to invest in transport $100 million for improvements and repairs to the infrastructure of the railway network on the island.  It is expected that once the work has been made, improvements and upgrades will increase the average speed of trains from 40km/ha to 100 km/h. With that in mind, in October 2007, Cuba Railroad ordered two hundred cars and 550 freight wagons from the wagon manufacturer Iranian Pars Wagon.