The Minolta Years - Linha do Corgo, North Portugal, 1978

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I was fortunate enough to go through some old folders and find these old images of Linha do Corgo, between Peso da Régua (by the Douro River, in the heart of the region that produces the wellknown Port Wine) and the beautiful town of Chaves.

I really was afraid that they had got lost...

So, running the risk of excessively bothering you with old trains and old lives, I decided to share them just for the fun of it, just to get myself amazed how old I am becoming, and how wonderful this country used to be.

Please, ponder that these photographs have very little resemblance with the ones that I have posted before about Nene Valley Railway, in the United Kingdom. The difference, evidently, consists not only in the use of Ektachrome film for sure...

In this case you are not looking at an open air museum run by some aficionados: instead, these images let you take a look at the Real Thing! Here you can take a glimpse at everyday life in the region some 32 years ago!

All photographs made with Minolta cameras and Kodak Ektachrome film.

How should my beard not grow snowy white, when I see so much great things being mercilessly and forever destroyed, when I watch our too well paid public administrators happily and carelessly contributing for the loss of such património cultural in the name of a very questionable progress?

Don't understand me wrong, I also can see that time doesn't stand still, and that the population needs comfort and modern facilities. I only can't accept that such a potencially rich region sees itself rid of such a heritage: the wonderful stations and trains are just foolishly destroyed or simply disappeared. Even the rails are gone and the bridge is impassable!

Why don't THEY (the people that sit at the top and that should look after us and the nation. It's for that that they get paid...) learn the lessons by people like the ones who run places like Nene Valley Railway?

I have no doubt that many train lovers and tourists in general would come for a ride and would gladly take the chance of visiting the region, learn it's tasteful food and wine, gaze at it's beauties. How can we be so stupid and despise that?

How can we allow that everything goes kaputt?

(Oh yes, I guess that we get what we deserve. We are the ones who waste our votes...)

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