The Almond Blossom Railway

El Ferrocarril De la Flor De la Almendra

Near Javea, Spain

My wife and I now live part of the year in the beautiful Marina Alta region of the Costa Blanca in Spain. The idea of building a railway was conceived circa 2002. I spent well over a year searching for a suitable plot of land in the area on which to build a small, private, 7¼in. gauge railway. About 20 different feasabilty drawings were made of different locations until in 2004 we eventually settled on this one.  

 

The chosen site was about 4000 sqm (about 1 acre) and faced south with 31 almond trees, one lemon tree, one carob tree and most importantly a 35 sq.m industrial workshop with electricity & water.

   

The only drawback being that the workshop is situated at a higher level than the rest of the plot, with an incline of 1in7 approx. Would I need to build a rack railway? In the picture above you can see the workshop at the top of the incline. To the immediate right the original toilet/shower/dog kennel and bread oven beyond. As the previous owner had died some 2 years earlier, the plot was somewhat unkempt when we first saw it. Infact it was only a few days before taking ownership that we actually managed to see inside the workshop!

I am in the process of getting the almond trees in order. Due to prior neglect it means serious pollarding which will take me several years to complete. I will do two or three a year, which will give us an ample wood supply for the fire back home, but unfortunately no almond kernels on those trees for a few years.

 

Here we are with some friends late in 2004, harvesting the almonds before I started the pollarding.....

...... And here are the almonds drying on our terrace, Marian kindly shells, blanches and deep fries them, hmmm ...delicious! This takes a lot of work, now we understand why they are so expensive to buy.