SOLLER STATION (MALLORCA ISLAND, SPAIN)

Mediterranean island train invokes nostalgia

Photos by Yomiuri Shimbun Photographer Toshikazu Sato

By Kyoji Maeda

Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

"Tickets, please," said a deep-voiced conductor as he approached me. I gave him my ticket and he punched it with a chrome-plated ticket punch.

The scene made me feel nostalgic for the ticket punch was very similar to those used at ticket wickets in Japan in my youth.

In another reminder of yesteryear, the cars on the train were mostly made of wood, making for a mellower sound as they passed over the joints in the track.

"This train doesn't look like a train used today. It's a really old-fashioned one," Gareth Jones, a 58-year-old traveler from Britain, ventured to me.

After passing through a few tunnels, the retro-looking train pulled into Soller Station.

Soller, a small town that squats at the foot of Puig Major — the highest mountain on Mallorca Island — once had thriving agricultural and textile industries.

In 1912, the Soller Railway was built to carry fruit and textiles from Soller to Palma, the central city of the island. In 1929, the railway was electrified, and that was the last time it was modernized. As a result, the railway can best be described as a "running museum."

But parts of the railway date back a lot further than the turn of the century. Soller Station is housed in a residential building that was built in 1606 and is an imposing cultural property.

While most of the interior of the building has been remodeled, the exterior masonry walls are of a typical construction for buildings of the era in the region, and many similar masonry buildings can be seen in the city.

Leaving the station, I turned into a small alley. Under the strong Mediterranean sun I relished the feeling of calm — it was as if time had stopped.

The story of Soller Railway is a common one of a railway built to service a thriving community in the early 20th century that has since seen its industries close.

"The last textile factory closed in 1975. Since then, we have had to find a way to survive by changing ourself into a tourist spot," said Miquel Nadal Palou, 42, a member of the Soller city assembly.

The railway station, which once sustained the city when it was a commercial base, now sustains it by attracting tourists looking for nostalgia.

As my fellow tourists got off the train, they made their way to the town center at a leisurely pace.

Many travelers take a streetcar in front of Soller Station and go down to the sea. But I went for a stroll around the town, taking in the sights of the town's old masonry buildings, which gave me a sense of the city's history.

The building of the former Soller Bank was particularly impressive, and I noted that it had been built in 1912, the same year the railway started to run.