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THE HERSEHY CUBAN RAILWAY

In 1916 the Hershey Chocolate Corporation of Pennsylvania purchased large tracts of land and built a sugar mill 45 km east of Havana, about halfway between the capital and Matanzas. To transport its produce to nearby ports and its workers to adjacent towns, it built a network of 135 km of electric railways. The first branches were steam-powered, but in 1919 Hershey Cuban Railway began ordering electric equipment from J. G. Brill and General Electric. Electric passenger service between Matanzas and "Central Hershey" (the sugar mill) began in January 1922 and was extended to Casablanca, across the bay from Havana, the following October. United Railways, the English company that operated all the other railroads in Havana Province, would not let the American line into town.

By 1924 Hershey Cuban had a fleet of 17 electric passenger cars and 7 electric locomotives. In addition to pantographs the vehicles carried trolley poles in order to cross streetcar lines in Matanzas and Regla - especially in the latter town, which used a 2-wire system. The railway prospered and still operates today.

The Hershey train consisted of a Brill passenger/baggage car of 1920 and Wason 154 of 1924. Hershey’s oldest cars were not its first to run. The interurbans that Cincinnati built for Cienfuegos were completed in June 1919, three months before Hershey ordered its Brills. They sat unused in Cienfuegos until purchased by Hershey in 1924. Cincinnati 213 sits at Cojímar terminus in 1956. The Cojímar line closed the next year.

Due to a declining sugar market the Hershey sugar mill closed in July 2002, after 86 years of operation. The future of the railway was at that time uncertain and many rail enthusiasts visited the line in the following months - perhaps for the last time. Now a group of entrepreneurs and train enthusiasts are in the process of restoring the historical electrical train and the railway tracks.

RAILWAY...