During my first visit to Hayti in 1997 I noticed rail road track designations on the only map available. Further inquiry revealed that the railroad had disappeared decades before. Some tracks remain in the pavement down by the Port au Prince harbor front, and a taxi driver told me that Leogane has tracks. Since I have been a transportation labor union guy, in a predominantly railroad union (the UTU), I am interested in these kinds of things.

Exploring around St Marc I discovered that Ave Maurepas, (Avenue Marefatra, garbage street) where my fami adoptiv lives, is built upon the former railroad bed. I asked about "chemin de fer", but no one knows that name. They say "tren". Further, they say "tren Mac Donald", which was the original name of the railroad.

The story of the demise of the railroad is that it was sold and physically picked up, put on ships and sent off to Asia during the Papa Doc period. Originally built in the early years of the century it was driven to bankruptcy by the government and taken over by Macoutes. This is similar to the electrical utilities, which were bankrupted by the government refusing to pay its own bills, but ancient electrical generating systems have no resale value.

North of St Marc on the way to Gonaive there are cut throughs in hillsides where the rail bed went. South of St Marc I discovered that the route of the railroad followed the coast out around the mountain where habitation is almost non existent.

In the spring of 2001, de mil un, I was able to explore the countryside around St Marc on my motorcycle. One day I took the Carpenter of the neighborhood along with me to find the village "Ravine Seche". An inauspicous name if ever there was one.

Ravine Seche appears to be built upon the remains of a rail switching yard, and the last two rail cars in the country are stranded there in the "dry ravine". Up country from Ravine Seche the former rail bed (now the road) goes around the bulge of the coast about 15 kilometers to St Marc. Bridges made of rail tracks and a few wheel assemblys from freight cars scatter the way. Half way along this route a small settlement appears, which I am informed is the remains of the "SHADA plantation", an infamous failure among many in the history of economic development projects in Haiti.

South of Ravine Seche the rail bed is the access road for numerous beach homes, some palatial, some peasant settlements.

name: rroad.html
created: 7 November 2001
modified: