Philippine Content

Sugar Cane Railways

I fell in love with these railways as a teenager, poring over the wonderfully bizzare steam engines running through exotic scenery in Colin Garret's book "Iron Dinosaurs". Little did I expect back then, that I would end up living in such places. Mostly these railways are all gone now, the only active steamers left being a couple of the HPCO's Baldwins that come out to play occasionally if some tourist can stump up the cash. Many locomotives have just been left where they were, to slowly rot their way back to nature, and there are also a substantial number of locomotives that have been 'plinthed' as static exhibits in various locations, but these too are slowly rotting away. There have been a few attempts at preservation, but very little progress due to continued infighting amongst those involved. The continued rise in the price of diesel oil is however making railways more attractive again, and there is even talk of some of the sugar cane railways being re-instated or expanded (but using diesel not steam locos).

Most of the cane railways were located on the island of Negros, some in Luzon, but our example here is the sole example based on Cebu. The Fowler loco shown here still exists, although like most it is now a static exhibit. The model is still unfinished, having been used as a testbed for many modeling techniques over the years. The inclined cylinders with Walschaerts valvegear of the original are about as hard as it can get to animate for use in Trainz, so this one may never even get finished.

The sugarcane car was in it's original form, my first Trainz model. It is typical of the hundreds of 3ft gauge cars in use by many different milling companies, that nearly all look to have been built to a common design. It has been upgraded over the years, but has never been released due to problems getting the animated load to look anything like a pile of sugarcane.

Manila LRT

The Manila LRT "Yellow line" started construction in 1981, and the first stage between Baclaran and Central Terminal opened in December 1984. The second stage from Central Terminal to Monumento opening in May of the following year. The original yellow line runs North-South and comprised 18 stations over a distance of 10.7 miles running on concrete viaducts above Rizal and Taft Avenues. A four station extension running East from Monumento to join the MRT at North Avenue is now almost complete.

1st Generation LRT

The model here represents the original stock manufactured by ACEC in Belgium, as refurbished in 2004. The refurbishment added badly needed air conditioning, and extended the 2-car units by adding centre cars to make 3-car units, although some 2-car units remain. These would normally run as a train made up of three of the 3-car units. There are 63 units, numbered from 1000.

This model started life as a conversion of the Sketchup model by MoniMark, but very little of the original remains. This now includes Internal detail, opening doors and interactive passengers.

3rd Generation LRT

This model represents the new stock on the LRT built in Japan by Kinki Sharyo and Nippon Sharyo, and delivered in 2006.  These operate in trains of four 2-car units, there are 48 of these units, numbered from 1200. Again this started as a conversion of a Sketchup model by MoniMark. It includes opening doors, but still needs interior detail adding.

Scenery

The model of Tayuman station started as a conversion of a Sketchup model by Nix15. It now includes interactive passengers.

General Scenery

Page updated : 22 Nov 2020