Philippine Railway Historical Society News and History!

Some more Panay historical guff.

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The Quirino-Lopez Bridge
By Dr. Vic Pido

A view from the Quirino Bridge.Well folks, we’re just a few days before December. The weather is fast changing. Traveling around will be good because we’re going to have a cool weather while we’re in traveling togs and shoes.

This time, we tackle the Iloilo River from the Quirino-Lopez Bridge.

Last issue, we learned that the Arroyo Fountain lady faces due east, which is where we get our sunshine. But nowadays, the sun rises from the east-south direction, which is exactly the area where we look at the Iloilo River, exactly on top of the Quirino Bridge. As you can see in the photo, the sun is at our back.

Nicolas Loney the man responsible for the construction of the Muelle Loney in 1926.As for the river, we are standing on the deeper part of it, which explains why the sea-going vessels are parked along its banks.

It would be crazy for seafarers to go down northward towards the rest of what we call the Iloilo River. Puzzling, isn’t it?

The story’s like this. In 1926, a guy named Loney, a sugar planter from Iloilo, built a canal from the south harbor of Panay, going due north. The canal ended just right under the Quirino Lopez Bridge. This canal served as a port for sea-going vessels, to ferry out the sugar cane of Loney. The sugar cane was brought in by Loney’s railway, which we used to call the Panay Railways. Remember that? Thus the birth of the Iloilo port and railway systems.

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