The 'Falkland Island Express" Supplies to the wireless station The most complete source of information is an article by R. A. Smith published in 'The Narrow Gauge' no.108 (Autumn 1985), pp.13-5, Professor Smith has kindly given permission for his photos to be reproduced below and for the whole article to be attached as an appendix. The railway was on the opposite (north) side of the harbour from Stanley, and was c. 3.5 miles long. It was built in connection with a powerful Marconi radio transmitter installed to improve communications with the northern hemisphere following the naval engagements in the South Atlantic in late 1914 (two British capital ships sunk, then four German ones, leaving the 'Dresden' to carry out its notorious raiding campaign.). Construction work started May 1915; the locos were despatched from Stoke in March (clearly considered an urgent project, also indicated by the work in the Falklands being done in winter). First trials of the transmitter were in April; the railway was completed about September. It was left in place to take stores to the radio station, but fell into dereliction in the late 1920s. Other sources suggest that the line was maintained to supply coal to the radio station until it went over to diesel power generation in the late 1940s, but Professor Smith's article makes it clear that technical developments in radio transmitting had vastly reduced the power generation needed. Locomotives and wagons Ben Fisher suggests that Kerr Stuart might have been particularly well placed to supply such locos at minimum notice on account of their habit of half-building locos for stock, which might also explain the non-consecutive works numbers?"
An early view showing one of the two 'Wren' class locos at the jetty. Note the open cab, less than appropriate for a Falklands winter. (Photo from R. A. Smith's collection)
A later view showing side screens added to the loco cab. The spot is Navy Point and the wagons have gained wooden bodies, probably locally made. (Photo from R. A. Smith's collection)
The photo that was later used on a Falkland Islands 54p stamp, as illustrated below. The loco has 'Falkland Island Express' on the tank, whilst the wooden wagon bodies carry removeable seats at each end for workmen. (Photo originally courtesy of the Falkland Islands Company, kindly provided by R. A. Smith) Sailing along the rails An early sail-driven wagon is pictured on one of the stamps shown below, but by the 1920s the design was more advanced. The photo below shows a wagon rigged with a single standing lugsail but with a lever geared to the back axle to permit hand-powered movement against the wind. Presumably the westerly winds made it easy to run down from Moody Brook to Navy Point but the return journey would have needed more effort.
The photo is slightly puzzling in that the wagon appears to be facing west. Since tacking against the wind is clearly impossible on a railway line I would have expected the sail to have been arranged the other way round for west to east downwind 'running'. A further photo, once published in the Falkland Islands Journal, is shown below. A variety of balanced lug, standing lug and gaff rigs have been tried!
Sets of stamps
Much more recently, in 2005, the 90th anniversary of the railway has been commemorated by the issue of four stamps. These use four photographs chosen from this website, three old black and white pictures and one recent colour one by Zacchary Stephenson showing the trackbed in 2002.
Stamps reproduced by courtesy of Creative Direction (Worldwide) Ltd and the Falkland Islands Post Office. Map of Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)
An old Admiralty chart, below, shows the area of the railway in more detail. Stanley is lower right with the harbour running across from east to west north of the town. Above that is the long headland known as the Camber with Navy Point at its eastern end. Moody Brook, the site of the radio station, is at the far western end of the harbour. The water there is shallow and coal and materials were therefore to be unloaded at the Camber Depot just south of Navy Point. Hence the need for the railway, which shows up as a thin black line along the north side of the harbour.
The two locos lie derelict at Navy Point in about 1943 (1). The saddle tanks have already disappeared, presumably to other uses.
Tracing the route using Google Earth Save the zip file to your hard disk. When you decompress it you will find that it contains three Google Earth KMZ data files. • TheCamber.kmz A static view of the Camber terminus area as if from 500m up. Once the files are separated you can click on them and they should open in Google Earth and show the appropriate locations or trackbed tours. You may have to click the run button in Google Earth's 'Places' pallete. Generally the route is clearer without the overlying vector path being checked and visible. As browsers develop we should be able to provide direct links from these webpages to call up Google Earth without the trouble of downloading and decompressing zip files but this is not yet reliable enough in all browsers. Surviving remnants BBC TV news broadcast maps at the time showed the railway line and this alerted a number of enthusiasts who, however, were initially too busy to bother about such details. Eventually, Richard Gardner, Raymond Selkirk and others explored the remains. Both of the above reported on their findings in issues of the Railway Magazine (2). At that time in late 1982 there were a number of sidings visible at the Camber with the remains of wagon turntables. Both steam locos were buried under a pile of scrap. Several wagons lay around and in the water. There was also a standard gauge steam crane.
West of Navy Point the rails had all gone but a few sleepers still lay on what had become an unmade track. Some rails had been utilised during the conflict to support the roofs of bunkers on Wireless Ridge. A pair of wagon wheels lay at Moody Brook but the original wireless station has long since gone. If investigating the remains of this railway The Royal Engineers later undertook the recovery of both locos from the scrap dump and placed them inside a container for safety. It was hoped that one or both of them could be restored and preserved, either out in the Falklands or back in Britain. Neither action seems to have occurred and a recent report via Bob Darvill suggests that one visitor (Kevin Prince) found the container half buried in gravel. Kevin himself reports that Jubilee type track can still be found up on the hills in an old quarry.
A number of photos taken in 2002 by Zachary Stephenson have been forwarded through the kind agency of André Philipsz of the Britlink website. Several of these are shown below. On the left is a solitary wooden sleeper and one track spike, found at the Camber.
The trackbed is still clearly visible. The view below looks east towards the Camber and Navy Point.
In the opposite direction, looking west to Moody Brook.
The remains of a wagon at the Camber.
Whilst the crane in the distance is not mounted on rails, the wooden longitudinals clearly hint at wider gauge track having been laid along the jetty at the Camber Depot. It would be good to confirm whether this was in fact standard gauge as a first guess suggests.
And tipped into the water nearby is the remains of a steam crane.
From the opposite side, it is clear that the crane has British style buffers, not perhaps necessary on a short quayside track but perhaps indicating an off-the-peg design suitable also for shunting by a loco.
Other rail systems in the Falklands? 1 A view from the landward end. A single track comes off the pier, beneath the wheels of the horse-drawn cart, and may well continue off to the right.
2 A side view from the east.
3 A view from the seaward end, showing the double line of tracks merging back into one at the near end.
4 At the far end of the pier a single line of rails ran transversely, presumably from a wagon turntable. However, it seems unlikely that the horse illustrated below would have travelled by rail!
Another old postcard shows the lighthouse at Cape Pembroke (4). There appears to be a short track, mounted partly on piers, to bring supplies up from a scotch derrick mounted at the shore. A short-lived whaling station constructed on New Island by Christian Salvesen is mentioned on the whaling station page, but there were also two sealing stations at Albemarle in the southeast of West Falkland. The remains of these still lie there. A number of Falkland farms had short hand-worked railway tracks to transfer wool from the shearing shed to the jetty, and there were also a number of processing plants which might have used small hand-worked systems (5). As in many mainland and South Georgian locations, such farms and factories found small 'Decauville' style railways convenient for the movement of fuel, raw materials and products to and from nearby jetties. A photo recently seen showed such a track on a jetty at Fox Bay, whilst Fernando Coronato of Puerto Madryn has forwarded the following pictures showing a wider gauged track onto the pier at North Arm in the Lafonia area in the south of East Falkland (7).
At first glance the North Arm railway track looks like any other hand-worked pier line, but closer examination, particularly of the seconf photo below, suggests that the gauge was probably nearer three foot than two.
Boiling-down ('trying') plants for extracting tallow from mutton existed at Goose Green, Port Stephens and Port Howard. The last of these later became a meat station where the sheep were slaughtered and dried before being frozen on board ship. Goose Green and San Carlos had meat canning factories. There were no freezer factories on the island like those in South America until the construction of the Colonial Development Corporation plant at Ajax Bay in the early 1950s. The remains of railway tracks still lie at San Carlos, Goose Green and Port Howard. There may also be remains at Pebble Island and Fitzroy (6). References: 9-1-09
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The sidings at Navy Point have since been largely hidden under new port facilities. Anecdotal reports suggest that next to nothing is visible at Moody Brook apart from the anchors for the cables which once stayed the wireless masts. 
