Santa Marta 2-8-2 Locomotives in Colombia

Class 29 (Locobase 15476)

Data from DeGolyer, Vol 79, pp. 703+. See also Stephen J Randall, Colombia and the United States: Hegemony and Interdependence (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992), pp. 119-124; and "El Ferrocarril de Santa Marta", Fundacion Magdalena blog entry of 25 Diciembre 2010, last accessed 12 October 2013 and Maurice P Brungardt, "La United Fruit Company en Colombia", originally published in English in Henry C. Dethloff and C. Joseph Pusateri (eds.), American Business History-Case Studies (Arlington Heights, IL, Harlan Davidson, 1987), pp. 235-256, translated into Spanish by Diana Silberman and posted as PDF (pp. 107-118). Works numbers were 61751-61752 in 1933.

After a slow start in the 1880s and 1890s as the Perez Triana company, banana growing in the Magdalena Department south of Santa Marta began to reach profitable levels just after the turn of the century. By now the plantations were owned by the Colombian Land Company, which was bought out in 1883 by the remarkable Minor Cooper Keith, a Brooklyn, NY native who would eventually be dubbed the "Uncrowned King of Central America". Keith would later merge his considerable, but vulnerable, assets with Boston Fruit Company in 1899 and emerge as first vice president and director of the mighty United Fruit Company. He soon arranged for United Fruit to buy up the assets of the Colombian Land Company in 1902.

The Santa Marta grew apace as it skirted the Sierra Madre de Santa Marta while it ran along the coast to Cienaga and then inland, ultimately to Fundacion. By 1912, the railway had completed 90 km (55.9 miles) of the 200 km (132.2 miles) projected. In 1921, the SMR carried 6,188,782 bunches of bananas. It also moved 357,404 pasajeros, and 53,892 tons of other freight.

But throughout the teens and twenties, UFC, which later reorganized this Colombian operation as Magdalena Fruit Company, was constantly pressured by Colombian interests. The monopoly (owner of approximately 90% of all banana-growing land in Colombia) particularly battled against labor opposition it characterized as influenced by the Soviet Union, a contest that would culminate in the Santa Marta Massacre of 6 December 1928. (Although provided for in the original 1846 charter, construction of the extension of the Santa Marta to meet the rio Magdalena only occurred in 1955.)

The standoff between UFCo and the government eventually resolved with the latter exercising its right to buy the railway in 1932. The SMR continued to operate the lines when it ordered these two small superheated Mikados. Eight inch (203 mm) piston valves served the cylinders.

As they were being delivered, the railway's name changed to the FC de Magdalena. (It would be nationalized entirely in 1947 and be renamed again in 1961 as the FC del Atlantico.)