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Nobody knows very well why Baldwin. Maybe because it sounds more cinematic. Perhaps degenerating a bit that of Babwil that made the Babcock & Wilcox smaller. Be that as it may … sestaotarra, let it be clear. Put it in big letters when you write about me. A lifetime of Biscay. No remote origins at the Baldwin Locomotive Works, no. Philadelphia for Americans. From the United States, I only like Hollywood.
Because our diva soon begins to shine. His talent, his image, his immense beauty … we have all that wasted here, in work from sunrise to sunset. So in 1966 Renfe He retires her from her duties. Now you are going to do other things. To go out in the movies, no less. At the time, Spain had become one of the most famous sets in the world, and great figures walked a bad host, demands for stars and fresh currency through small towns, the kind where until then the news came when the chamarileros arrived. Imagine the change. Low prices, good technicians, kick-ass extras (and free most of the time, which always decorate more) and a variety of landscapes that Soria painted you with Siberian watercolors that made you see the Grand Canyon of Colorado (Arizona) very close. where this The Colorado (Conil). You see, coincidences. And that’s where the locomotives came in, because they always look great. At least the steam ones.
On June 23, 1975, the electrification of the railway was inaugurated in Spain. It was in the Madrid-Guadalajara Corridor. That day Juan Carlos I He turned off the boiler of the Mikado 141f-2348 symbolizing the change of time (the emeritus was always more than Ave, it is also true). It did not represent a definitive end to the steam (the Ponferrada-Villablino line maintains the last passenger train in regular service of this type until 1980), but it did represent a death certificate for something that had lasted almost a century and a half. From then on, the image of a locomotive spitting smoke as it moves near the horizon passes into the memories of grandparents and grandmothers.
But the other remained. The movies. And that’s where Babcock & Wilcox has succeeded more than any other. The world of cinema. Ah, if I told you … Thing to see. What eyes, Clint Eastwood. What a bad host Sergio Leone. Yes, I was important. I still am. A whole figure. A reference. In fact, that saved my life. Yes, how you hear it. Because I was already a little tired. Many years working. A little tired. So much so that my bosses wanted to recycle me, which is what you do with old workers, you know. Only they recycle us roughly, turning us into iron. Scrapping. A horror, my nuts bristle just remembering it. And that’s where the cinema came in. To the rescue, like the heroes of the movies. Someone with my characteristics was needed. Dark, racial, with that Yenesequá of savage elegance. They called me and I debuted. Villa rides, was entitled that. Yul Brynner, Robert Mitchum, Charles Bronson. Oh, and Maria Grazia Buccella, who was gorgeous, to be seen. I would never want to get away from the cameras anymore. That was my place.
From then on, Guadix began to exhibit curves and naturalness in dozens of films. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The dead had a price, The peacemaker, For a bunch of dollars, The oil companies, Reds. Let’s say that he specialized in the genre of spaghetti western, where the presence of a steam engine smoking is always appreciated while it arrives at the town station (just four badly placed timbers … the description serves for platform and village) anticipating a good host salad and lead. Yes, ideal roles for her. We can say, without fear of being wrong, that she is the most successful Spanish filmmaker of her time.
But it is difficult to see success so close and to survive later into oblivion. Up in the eighties. Anyway, what am I going to tell you about the eighties? They were funny, yes, but they also had a touch of destructive spirit. Too many excesses. And less and less work, because the tastes of the public had changed. So little by little I found myself more and more cornered. And … that, a losing streak. At the end of that decade he was almost in his last years. It still looked pretty, but inside … It was then that the Guadix Town Hall she decided to take care of one of her famous neighbors (even if she was only adopted from Granada). For this they send it to the north, to Lleida. It takes more than ten years to restore it, and sixty million of the old pesetas are spent there (she, who saw so many bags with the dollar symbol passing in front of her wheels). But the treatment works, and she feels better and better. Man, she’s never going to be a cheery whistling wench while shoveling coal, but that’s not bad either.
The problem is that, like many stars of the show business, our fake Baldwin was also involved in shady affairs. Ugly. Corrupt them politics, no less. Naomi Sabugal tells it in her magnificent Sons of Carbon (Alfaguara, 2020). Operation RocketThey told him, because sometimes the Civil Guard gets horny for names that you can’t even believe. The starting problem was the management of Miner funds, destined to the reconversion of areas that have lived for decades (or centuries) exploiting coal mines. She, the Baldwin, was passing by, believe it or not, but she ended up splashed.
October 2013. The Civil Guard detains three people. The former mayor of Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo, the president of the Center for Historical Studies of the Spanish Railroad and the CEO of the Compañía General de Ferrocarriles Turísticos. You can imagine it. We have added and subtracted, I take one, and there are accounts that do not come out. But nothing comes out of anything. Some twelve and a half million euros do not come out. Several thousand pages and seven changes of magistrate later the thing is still bogged down. In a siding, for making subtle puns.
Research object were projects like those of the Guadiato train, which was to be a tourist line between Córdoba and Almorchón. You also have to look with a magnifying glass how and in what way several old machines were restored, the kind that blew smoke from the chimney. Like our protagonist, you see. That she was so calm, resting in Catalunya. Well, nothing, they claim it from Guadix. That we have signed an agreement with the Compañía General de Ferrocarriles Turísticos and now, with all this coming out … Let the star come home. If they even call it Guadix in some places, where better than here to rest. You see, not even when retiring do they leave the great stars alone.
Anyway, again on the road, like when he went to promotion in his glory years. A month of travel, no less, because sometimes things don’t go as planned. The Babcock & Wilcox 140-2054 leaves Portbou on January 11, 2014, at night. It was his turn to cross all of Spain in tow of the 333,407 machine. Slowly, because we no longer have the meats for film speeds. Maximum of thirty miles an hour, they said, but then it was much less. It took him almost a month to get to Guadix. In between … technical stops here and there. A longer one in Madrid, for various arrangements. Aches of age, I go through the clinic and back on tour. Memories of the old days.
There it is now. Sometimes they turn it on, and it is a matter of sight, because the charm of the steam is never lost. And less her, with the stories behind her. If I spoke. But speak. If I spoke.
And the boiler smiles shyly.
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