The East Coast Demerara Railroad

Did you know that the first railway in South America was built in where is present-day Georgetown, Guyana? In fact, by the second half of the 20th century, a system of ferries and railroads ran the coastline from Parika at the mouth of Essequibo River to New Amsterdam on the Berbice River. But by the mid-1970s, the whole system was scrapped altogether.

Origins

Valentine’s Day 1837. Love was in the air, and so was the thought of rail transport in the then colony of British Guiana. An article published in a local newspaper, the Royal Gazette, first proposed the idea. It outlined several reasons for the investment but one that stuck out was “the pressing need of the planter to substitute mechanical for manual labor.” You might ask why is this interesting?

Slavery and Trains

In 1834, chattel slavery was abolished in the British Empire. With British Guiana being an agrarian colony built in a rain forest, there was a heavy reliance on the forced labor of captured Africans to maintain the Colonial plantocracy in Guyana. Naturally, plantation owners were none too pleased about the order of Emancipation. Fearing a backlash, the British Parliament gave monetary compensation for plantation owners across the British Empire and a four year period when recently emancipated Africans were required to stay on their respective plantations. With it being only a year and some change until the end of the slavery-lite period, the planters were desperately seeking to find ways to minimize their reliance on manual labor for getting their goods to Georgetown. Cause, why pay a man a fair wage when you can just replace him with a machine right?

Construction Begins

The month after the article was published, the Demerara Railway The company was formed to obtain financing for the operation. They wanted to build a railway from Georgetown, to Mahaica. However, it would be years until construction started. The company was not able to raise enough capital in the colony because many sugar plantation owners claimed they were near bankrupt as a result of emancipation. Although, I think it’s fair to say that if you can’t do be a successful businessman without using forced labor then you probably weren’t a good businessperson, to begin with.Two-thirds of public financing was secured from investors in Great Britain and the Netherlands. Construction on the first segment of rail between Georgetown and Plaisance began in March 1847 a mere two decades after the first iron railway was laid down in Britain.

All Aboard!

Then on November 3, 1848, rail service commenced between the two terminals. The day was marked by a grand celebration in Georgetown. One that continued even after one of the railway directors was crushed to death by a rolling train. However, the bittersweet tone of the opening day may have been an omen of what was to come. Almost immediately, the company was beset by financial issues. It was so bad that the colonial government had to bail out the company several times before they presumably just got feed up of the whole game and eventually bought the company decades later. After years of stop and go construction, the Mahaica terminus at Helena was finally completed in August 1864. The same month the railroad was formally declared open. Its spanned nearly twenty-two miles and the total cost of construction was estimated to be 313,890 pounds. The railway was an instant hit for residents on the line.

The Demerara-Essequibo Railway

Hearing demands to extend the railroad, in 1890 the government granted a contract to the Demerara Railway Company to extend the railroad from Mahaica to Rosignol and to build another line between Vreed-en-Hoop and Tuschen on the Western Atlantic Coast of the Demerara River. The extension to Rosignol began in 1897 and took three years to complete. The terminus was the ferry docks on the west bank of the Berbice River. This facilitated an easy connection by ferry steamer to New Amsterdam and as an extension the plantations and villages in Berbice County. As for the railroad to the west of the capital, it was named the Demerara-Essequibo Railway. The first section of the railway was laid down in 1900 between Vreed-en-Hoop and Greenwich Park and later extended to Parika in 1914.

The Demerara Railway Company was later sold to the government in 1922. At a time in which many roads in Guyana were mudbanks, the railroad offered a reliable, albeit slow means of transportation for many residents of the coastland. Villages began to grow around railroads as did the economy of each of the villages who had access to the railroad. However, as the railway chugged along into the 20th century, it began to show signs of aging.

The Decline

The system used steam engines well into the 1950s and suffered from poor maintenance. This prompted the colonial government to study the feasibility of modernizing the system. It was discovered the cost would go into the millions of pounds sterling. By 1965, the colonial government had already written off the upgrade as too expensive. After Independence, the cost to maintain the system continued to rise. This increase coincided with the growth roads in Guyana and relatively low international fuel prices. Finding the financial situation untenable, then Prime Minister of Guyana, Forbes Burnham, decided to close down the Georgetown-Rosignol line in 1972. Guyana’s second rail line, the Demerara-Essequibo Railroad was closed down two years later in 1974. If you go looking for abandoned railways in Georgetown you won’t find them. They have dug up long ago.

Legacy

However, the embankment for the Demerara-Mahaica line still exists. A The majority of its length has been paved with asphalt. That road is called Railway Embankment. Rusting rail bridges can still be found silently spanning the Abary and Mahaica rivers. The Lamaha Street terminus in Georgetown is now being used as a depot for the Ministry of Public Infrastructure. It is one of the few surviving buildings of Guyana’s railway era. However, the most indelible mark left was probably left on the childhood memories of many of Guyana’s mature citizens. That is the story of the first railroad in South America, the East Coast Demerara Railway.