EDITORIAL - Railway as heritage

We have great sympathy for the position of the Portland Parish Council and others who last week blocked the Jamaica Railway Corporation's (JRC) attempt to remove from the parish an old locomotive engine, carriages and other railway equipment which the JRC intended to sell as scrap.

Indeed, its argument is reasonable - that the railway is part of the heritage of the eastern Jamaica parish and that what remains of it at the old Boundbrook station should be treasured as testament to the steam engine and the 'diesel' in that side of the island.

It is unfortunate, if it is true, as the chairman of the parish council, Mr Floyd Patterson, claimed it to be, that JRC workers "arrived unannounced" for the demolition job, even though the council had expressed its desire to preserve the railway facility as a heritage site.

But it is a shame that it appears to have taken a crisis for Mr Patterson's council to be jolted into recognition that it sat on a piece of history that was cheap to acquire and exploit.

The railway has a significant place in Jamaica's transportation history. The island has had some form of rail service since 1845, or for 166 years. The first leg was built only two decades after the start of a passenger rail service in Britain. Jamaica was the first British colony outside Canada that had a railway, and among the first places outside Europe and North America to have one. The leg from Bog Walk, in south-central Jamaica and Port Antonio, the capital of Portland, was constructed in 1896.

However, the narrow-gauge, single-track railway has been dormant in eastern Jamaica since Hurricane Allen, in 1980, destroyed tracks and facilities. Passenger services across the island halted a dozen years later, when the Government, lacking the money to modernise the JRC, pulled the plug on a loss-making business that had ceded ground to motor vehicles.

Some cargo, particularly bauxite and alumina, is still hauled by train, and there has been much talk over the past 20 years of divesting and upgrading the railway. The current transport and works minister, Mr Mike Henry, has been the most energetic in his efforts, declaring railway to be an integral part of his much-touted multimodal mix of solutions to Jamaica's public-transportation issues. A fortnight ago, he was able to start up one of the old diesel engines and have it draw carriages full with specially invited passengers and painted in the form of the Jamaican flag.

difficult to interest buyers

Minister Henry, his enthusiasm and confidence notwithstanding, is, as was the case with the previous administration, finding it extremely difficult to seriously interest possible buyers to have a go at the railway as a public-transportation enterprise.

It may happen that Mr Henry finds a deep-pocketed buyer and that passenger rail, after much investment in modernisation, may roll again. In the meantime, there is heritage value in what remains.

As Mr Patterson noted, it can't be much of an effort for Portlanders to match the J$250,000 (US$3,000) the JRC would raise from selling the locomotive as scrap. Or, for that matter, raising the money to refurbish an engine a and short portion of line over which it can run as an attraction in Portland.

Does Jamaica treasure its heritage? Give us your opinion at letters@gleanerjm.com

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