Pablo Neruda National Railway Museum

The capital city of the Araucania

Region of Chile, where we are living,

is the town of Temuco. Throughout

the twentieth century, Temuco was

known as the "City of Trains"

because it was the hub location

of all the rail traffic for the southern

part of Chile. The old locomotive

hall, or "roundhouse",

built in 1933, is at the

center of a large park

that has been preserved

to celebrate the history

of rail transportation in Chile.

The facilities were declared

a National Monument in 1989

and inscribed a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1998.

Officially known as Museo Nacional Ferroviario Pablo Neruda,

the site also honors Temuco's favorite son,

poet Pablo Neruda, whose father worked for the railway

and who lived here during his youth.

The romance of the rails and the constant winter rains

of Southern Chile inspired some of Neruda's poetic cadence

and imagery which is demonstrated in the following example:


ODE TO THE TRAINS OF THE SOUTH

Trains of the South, midgets
among the volcanoes,
cars
sliding
over
wet-slick
rails
from the lifelong rains,
among crisp
mountains
and sorrowing
for the charred tree stumps.
Oh
frontier
of dripping forests,
vast ferns, water,
and wreaths.
Oh fresh
territory,
newly emerged from lake,
and river,
sea or rain,
with sopping hair,
waist girdled by
prodigious vines,
and then
in the midst
of all the greenery,
parting
the heavy head of hair,
a lost streamer,
plume
of a fleeting locomotive,
with a train dragging
vague things
through the shattering solemnity
of nature,
voicing
a cry
of anxiety,
smoke,
like a hot-and-cold chill
on the landscape!

So
from their waves
the wheatfields
converse
with the passing train
as it were
shadow, waterfall, or bird
of those latitudes,
and the train
spits out
its sparks
of burning coal
with the dark
malice
of the devil
and continues on,
and on,
and on,
climbing the high viaduct
of the river Malleco
like mounting
a guitar,
singing
on the heights
of the balancing blue
steelwork,
the vibrant train whistles
at the end of the world
just
as if
it were saying good-bye
and going to fall where
earthly space
ends,
and plunge down among the last
islands of the sea.

I'm going with you,
train, rattling
frontier
train:
I'm going to Renaico,
wait for me,
I have to buy wool in Collipulli,
wait for I have
to get off in Quepe,
Loncoche and Osorno,
to look for pine nuts, new
woven fabrics, smelling
of sheep and rain ...
Run
train, caterpillar, murmur,
longitudinal little animal,
among the cold
leaves
and the fragrant earth,
run
accompanied by
taciturn
men in black mantles
on horseback,
with silent sacks
of potatoes from the islands,
with the wood
of red larch,
of fragrant beech,
of eternal oak.

Oh train,
explorer
of lonely places,
when you return
to the Santiago yards,
to the beehives
of men and their criss-crossed domain,
perhaps you'll sleep
for one sad night
a dream without perfume,
snow or roots,
or islands waiting for you in the rain,
motionless
among anonymous
railroad cars.
But
I, in an ocean
of trains,
in a sky full
of locomotives,
would recognize you
by
a certain air
from afar, by your wheels
wettened there far away,
and by your grieving
heart that knows
the unspeakable, savage,
rain-drenched
blue fragrance!

-- Pablo Neruda

Today, the City of Temuco has restored a steam engine convoy
that can transport up to 250 persons, consisting of an 820 locomotive,
two economy class wagons, a tourist wagon and a dining coach.
The dream is to occaisionally revive the magnificent times prior
to 1980 when passengers regularly traveled the
Temuco-Osorno route.