NARROW GAUGE RAILWAYS OF THE SPANISH LEVANTE
Rather than give you yet another "vanity" page boring you with details of my unremarkable life and non achievements, I thought I would bring you a taste of just one aspect of the many factors involved in my moving from the UK to Benitachell in 1999.
I have always loved railways, and railway history, and, especially, the narrow gauge. Both as a visitor and now as a resident I have set out to discover as much as possible about the metre gauge lines that ran, and still run, in the area bounded by Valencia in the north and Cartagena in the south. The lines covered here are the closed lines between Alcoy and Cieza (VAY), Alcoy and Gandia (AG) and Carcagente and Denia (CD), and the still open FEVE line from Cartagena to Los Nietos, the FGV line from Alicante to Denia and the FGV network that is the Metro de Valencia.
For those interested in the topic, I have appended a bibliography of the books in my possession relating to the topic. Some are long out of print, but copies occasionally turn up in second hand book shops.
Click here for the bibliography
To give you a flavour of what's to follow, here are two contrasting photos. The black and white picture, taken by a pioneer in this field, D. Trevor Rowe, is of the afternoon train from Alcoy to Gandia pausing at Lorcha on a wet spring day in 1965. The colour photo is by Doreen Hayles and shows a similar view in Spring 1997.
1965
1997
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