Virtual Railfan Tour of Bolivia - Arica to La Paz Railway

This is Puya Raimondii - a bromeliad known as the Queen of the Andes which reputedly blooms only every 100 years. It is a feature of this area. Taken with a telephoto lens I tried but never managed to get any closer to this than here

The Arica to La Paz Railway was an important line which connected La Paz to the port of Arica in Chile.  I went over this line twice.

- on 1 December 1998 I went over the whole Bolivian part by track car (known as zorra - vixen or bitch) from Viacha to Charana, on the border with Chile.

- on 28 February 2002 I went, again in a track car, between Viacha and Comanche to look mainly at bridges.

At that time there was one train a day in each direction over the line although in 2002 service had been suspended for about 18 months because of a bad bridge in Chile.  Today it appears the line is abandoned or at least not in use.

This is the only picture I have of a train on this line.  

The line passes through very high scrub land

It was fascinating to see flamingos among the cattle.
Coming back from Charana I was treated to one of the few scares I have had in my railway career. We had a clearance from Charana to Calacoto which was about half way.  Knowing that there were still trains running on this line I asked how we were going to get from Calacoto to Viacha.
There was a noncommittal nonchalant shrug.
Calacoto turned out to be a village of mud houses.  I asked where the telephone was to be told that there wasn't one in the village. There was no radio reception. I was then told we were going on.
So we went on without any authority trying to contact Viacha by radio. After about five miles we crested a small hill and found we could get radio reception. The car then went backwards and forwards to find the location with the best reception. We were then able to get a clearance for the rest of our journey. Some nasty words were spoken when I returned to La Paz.

In 2002 we only ran as far as Comanche because we wanted to stop to examine some bridges.

We took a break for sandwiches and I decided to try and climb up to see some of the bromeliads. Our car is seen in the siding close to the station

Because of the altitude this was as high as I was able to get

These guys are sleeping for 100 years

This is as close as I was able to get

Comanche is at 4035 meters above sea level

These zorra are useful. There is a turntable under the floor which can be lowered so the car can be turned around by hand to run in the opposite direction.
On the way back we took a look at some of the bridges. I was accompanied by Elwyn Hopkin, a bridge engineer and a good friend.



This land appears, on the surface, to be deserted but quite often when we stopped we would come across people eking out a living in the poor soil.







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