Mini Sand Rail Chassis

Through the Atacama Desert Aboard the Tacna-Arica railroad

Drive to the railway station Arica in Chile in a summer morning swelteringly hot, caught glimpse of the wooden, 60-year-old English built car guard, signed in 0261 and painted a bright orange and yellow on the screen, making my way down the stairs and cross a few through the construction of the platform, where I met the first day of the departure of Tacna-Arica Railway trains, scheduled to leave at 0935 for their trip across the border, through the vast Atacama Desert, in Tacna, Peru. A tour bus, intermittent stopping in front of the station, vomited about two dozen passengers who had rushed through the same station and immediately infiltrated the singular, the car standing, museum-like. Raise one arm and one about to ask if the group had been waiting for the morning train to Peru, a face without a name corrected my thoughts audible with an exclamation. "This is it!" who had shouted.

In disbelief, I climbed the few stairs to the wooden relic, fully expecting the retention of standing and silent, however, the "engineer" came into its own interest, side door, inserted a key, and the car's deep, throaty pinnacle diesel engine in the chassis-vibration life. Through the Atacama Desert, in this, I thought?

Starting slow forward momentum and more beyond the platform on the track before my thoughts could run at the end of theirs, this movement, independent coach serve as both transport and protection, such as engine and rail car. Parallel to the sand-lined under the Pacific sky, which had led his group in the morning without color problems blue, the coach kept track of dust embedded Arica beyond their neighborhoods characterized by low-rise modern apartments, behind which rose Soft silhouettes, wave-shaped mountain, tan and brown in the foothills of the Andes, which was as dry as dust and lack of a single green sprout vegetation.

Apparently without rails, the wagon, built by vertical wooden planks and a slightly arched roof, penetrated the buried rails regular dirt flanked by small piles of rocks and sand, on the outskirts of the Atacama Desert, dust is filtered through the open windows and exit stung the eyes and mouth submerged in the sand. Behind, on his way, he got up mini dust tornadoes and the newly covered trail that extends to its origin, some symbolically in the history of railways, which had spread equal to its origin.

only in Peru the international line railway, and the second to be built here, the Tacna-Arica Railway traces its origin to December 16, 1851, when a decree authorizing the construction of a rail, has led to a contract awarded to John Hegan on 6 August the following year. He had provided the import of 400 Chinese workers, using width standard track, the establishment of minimum rates, and transfer of rights to another party. Hegan, an advance payment of two million pesos for the project in Peru, been forced to repay within a period of three years at an interest rate of 4.5 percent.

The line, completed in 1855, had spread to 62 km 1455 mm gauge, built of 60 pounds per yard rail links tied to quebracho wood, and had covered the six stations Tacna, Km 42, Hospice, Writings, Chacalluta and Arica, and had crossed five bridges. The 3.8 percent rating has remained between Magullo and Tacna.

Proof of service Company "Tacna-Arica Railway FCTA" or "Arica and Tacna Railway Company, had begun on December 25, 1855, while the service Scheduled passenger had opened two years later, on January 1, 1857, with a fleet of five R & W 4-4-0 locomotive numbered 869-873 Espino, beginning their contractual period of 99 years.

Because the initial passenger and cargo volume had been able to generate enough income, rates, trying to encourage traffic had been reduced by half in 1859.

Although studies Balta-President's mandate to extend the line to La Paz, Bolivia, have been instrumental to transport troops during the Pacific War, the project never materialized.

Two other developments had been considered: a 478-mile, to eastern extension, expected in 1904, have also adopted the posture of La Paz, while moving to the 278-kilometers south from Arica to Zapiga This would connected with the railway system in Chile, but then the current occupation of the territory of Chile had deterred otherwise both efforts.

Several locomotives additional steam had been instrumental in maintaining the service, which includes both Rogers Tacuro Morro and a 2-6-0 and then 4-4-0 model thorns, all during the last part of the 1800s. early-1900 had included teams 2-4-0 and 2-6-0 Baldwins 1908, a Kerr Stuart 0-4-0, 1911, and Alco Diesel 1958 CC, the team both local level and the company Linke Hoffman in Germany. eleven wagons had composed the fleet in 1939.

After being administered by Enafur, Ferrocarril Tacna-Arica Enapu had been passed, and finally, the regional government of Tacna, Arica railroad workshops have been moved to this terminal and the ownership of the Chilean section the track having been retained by Peru at this time.

While earthquakes and floods had destroyed part of the line in 2001, its reconstruction, and the persistence has allowed to hold its 150th anniversary in 2006.

The powder turned up, revealing the bright sun tracks the car alone had cleared just, followed by road. Flat expanses of brown powder shadow stretched tan silhouettes waveform closed head right through the windows. A man stuck here, on the other side of the only coach of the green paint peeling walls, probably would cause him to hallucinate the silhouettes in waves water, I thought.

Staggering on its lateral axis, the coach, still vibrant with its diesel engine adapted and smacking his wheels riding the rails sometimes disappears, crossed the Chilean-Peruvian border, marked by an obelisk summary, in 1000. The hot, dry wind, carried out not welcomed breeze through the open windows, but the vapor drying of the sand in place.

The passengers, negotiating the crowded car, which had offered a four abreast, face to face bench seat configuration, met in the painted yellow, the middle sliding door lobby which had given out on each side.

The track, along with the Atacama Desert, which had supported it, seemed to extend to infinity in front of the train dry.

The stretch, in fact, 600 700 miles from north to south between the Loa River and the mountains separating the Salado drainage basin-Copiapo, extending to northern Peru border had flanked by the mountains of Domeyko in the east and the Coastal Range in the west. It consists of gravel and sand alluvial accumulations east pans and salt at the foot of the mountains on the west coast, which contained the 3000 meters Tamarugal ground floor, raised by a depression formed extending from north to south. An arid coast of the continent, the desert was created by a permanent cell South Pacific high pressure that had been given one of the driest places in the world, leading to precipitation average of two to four times per century.

Tacna is now about the rail car came truly an oasis in the desert. The river valley Caplina-watering, lining on both sides of the dusty track until then, had revealed a lush vegetation, which supported the growth of figs, olives, grapes, pomegranates, and prickly pears.

Very small, cement-block places beyond the vegetation and no more than tool sheds, marked the claims of individual Peruvians land, the location of their future homes, while even earlier claims had been designated by the pure lines drawn in the desert, marks representing the foundations of homes in the future. To the left of the track, including power lines had risen from the dust, indicating initial margin of civilization.

As the train continued its journey, however, a third stage of structural progress had been common: the lines of these walls had supported desert concrete and was covered with bricks, not even one human have lived in any of these outstanding buildings still homeless. It seemed as if the vast extensions had sprung a city without a soul, still uninhabited.

Sandwiched between the modern, two-lane roads that form the Avenida Cuzco, the track, Tacna threshold, entered the city, its buildings, making commercial purposes and carrying their signs, with each clack of the wheels of the car.

Piercing the silence with his horn, as it announced its arrival in Chile, Tacna-Arica Railroad motor-coach thread length and surrounded by palm trees, pieces of manicured lawns and sidewalks Fieldstone, while cars and taxis, in parallel with its path, went hand on each side. The needles of the cathedral from the Plaza de Armas, rose in the distance.

Inching through the door leaning clock tower, the only car, orange and yellow stopped dead on the rails of copper color had increased and had lulled many steam engines, wooden cars, freight cars and shows the Tacna Railway Museum, the rolling stock had been instrumental in the early history of Tacna-Arica Railway.

Lowering the three, a narrow staircase to the platform of the station 1856, I looked on track driving through the gate of the clock tower to the city and extends through the sometimes buried land one of the Atacama desert, across the border Arica Chile and its origin, and somehow realized that I had connected two countries, and a century of history, all in a single day.

About the Author

A graduate of Long Island University-C.W. Post Campus with a summa-cum-laude BA Degree in Comparative Languages and Journalism, I have subsequently earned the Continuing Community Education Teaching Certificate from the Nassau Association for Continuing Community Education (NACCE) at Molloy College, the Travel Career Development Certificate from the Institute of Certified Travel Agents (ICTA) at LIU, and the AAS Degree in Aerospace Technology at the State University of New York – College of Technology at Farmingdale. Having amassed almost three decades in the airline industry, I managed the New York-JFK and Washington-Dulles stations at Austrian Airlines, created the North American Station Training Program, served as an Aviation Advisor to Farmingdale State University of New York, and devised and taught the Airline Management Certificate Program at the Long Island Educational Opportunity Center. A freelance author, I have written some 70 books of the short story, novel, nonfiction, essay, poetry, article, log, curriculum, training manual, and textbook genre in English, German, and Spanish, having principally focused on aviation and travel, and I have been published in book, magazine, newsletter, and electronic Web site form. I am a writer for Cole Palen’s Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in New York. I have made some 350 lifetime trips by air, sea, rail, and road.

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