The three main railway operators in Catalonia (Renfe, Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat and Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona) publicly agreed a few days ago in recognizing the need for Barcelona to have a large public transport museum. In this space available to other large cities in the world and conspicuous by its absence in the Catalan capital, trains could be exhibited that help explain the history and evolution of the sector and the country.
Waiting for this chronic lack in which all companies would be involved to become a reality, each one is doing what it can and where it can. FGC opened yesterday a new space for the preservation of historical heritage. A warehouse next to the Martorell Central depot that has been baptized as Space of the metric track and in which you can visit more than twenty locomotives, coaches and wagons that provided service on the Llobregat-Anoia line throughout the 20th century .
The oldest are steam locomotives, which have undergone the corresponding restoration work and which take visitors back a century. Other trains on display, on the other hand, are much more recent, such as the 211 series, in operation since the late eighties and retired in 2009. In this case, they activate memories of not so many years ago, when the stations did not yet have doors with machines validators and a door had to be opened to pass from one wagon to another. Between one and the other, diesel tractors and a saloon car from when there were still classes.
The historical journey does not end there. On the three tracks of more than 100 meters in length you can see both passenger and freight trains, since the convoys that have transported the material extracted from the mines to the port of Barcelona have always had a special presence on this line. potash or the cars manufactured by Seat, to give two examples that can be seen passing today between passenger trains. A fuel tank wagon and another silo stand out.
Although the public company of the Generalitat welcomes the creation of a great museum in Barcelona, it is not trivial that this space has been opened in Martorell. “The pieces must be contextualized in the territory in which they have been operating”, assured the president of FGC, Toni Segarra, during the inauguration of the heritage space.
Its construction on the site of the old locomotive workshop has been carried out coinciding with some actions to improve the infrastructure at this station, which is set to play a fundamental role in the future extension of line 8 from Plaça Espanya to Gràcia. It will be in Martorell where many of the new trains that will serve a line that in the coming years aspires to double the number of passengers will begin and end the route and that perhaps future generations will be able to see one day in a museum in Barcelona.
