Cemitério de Máquinas a Vapor
THE ABANDONED TRAINS IN PORTUGAL
This is the ‘Cemitério de Máquinas a Vapor’, a train graveyard on the shunting yard of Estação das Devesas in Vila Nova de Gaia. The trains were stored here in 1993 and are covered in rust.
The six machines served almost all over the country hauling mixed, fast and freight trains. The locs were taken out of service in the 1970s. For 20 years they were kept at the Contumil depot, but in the 1990s they were moved to Gaia station.
Only three of the six steam engines that have been parked here for two decades will be saved. The other three will be demolished and sold for scrap. The intention is to move three locomotives to the National Railway Museum in Entroncamento. An operation that is not easy because these machines can no longer be moved or towed, and the rail company has no wagons to carry them.
The locomotives set for demolition are numbered 0184, 0190, and 072. The first two were acquired by Portugal in the 1920s as war reparations from Germany, while the third was constructed in Switzerland in 1916. The additional locomotives, numbered 294, 282, and 701, are of German origin but notably were the first built to Portuguese engineers’ technical specifications. Previously, railway companies could only purchase what was readily available on the market. My visit to the ‘Cemitério de Máquinas a Vapor’ occurred in 2018.
