Estrella in Portbou

Years have now passed since the last of the surviving Estrella services, the Costa Brava, had its route cut back to terminate in Barcelona, stripping its own name of any meaning. Long gone are the months when it only climbed as far as Cerbère on weekends, a looming omen of what was to come...

Currently, it faces a sentence of death, and it is, ironically, one of the few services left in our country still operated by conventional rolling stock. The railway in Spain is losing its charm; thirty years have slipped away since those wonderful 1980s, when Expreso trains were made up of dozens of coaches and the only sounds to be heard were the chugging of diesel engines or the clicking of rheostatic control systems. Everything was beginning to decline. We are at the end of an era, and this is its final casualty.

Here we have a rake just after completing its service, shunting back from Cerbère and entering Portbou, where it will wait for its return journey to Madrid.