Virtual Railfan Tour of Chile - Ferrocarril Tocopilla al Toco 1993

 

Tocopilla is not very prepossessing.

I'll start in the north of Chile with this nitrate railway. It was 3' 6" gauge and ran on 1500V DC. It was closed in August 2015 after severe rainfall damaged the tracks to the extent that the owner decided it was beyond economic repair. The area is generally very dry desert so heavy rainfall was likely not anticipated.

The line was known as the Tocopilla - Maria Elena line

Tocopilla yard

Tocopilla yard. The locomotive could be a GE 70 ton in which case it may originally have been meter gauge,


Tocopilla

The trip was worthwhile for the scenery alone, one of the driest places on earth.



Our private cars were attached t the rear of service trains


The train crew were openly drinking beer - a rule G violation in Canada

I had to wait until we had returned to Tocopilla for a large beer,













Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Wednesday - Zurich Hauptbahnhof Part One

Image
Zurich Hauptbahnhof  Paul has prepared some extensive notes and photos of the Zurich Hauptbahnhof.  This will be in several parts.  The busiest station in Switzerland is Zurich Hauptbahnhof (Zurich HB) which is used primarily by the SBB. It has 26 tracks serving almost 3000 trains daily and it is one of the busiest stations in the world. It was built in the 1870s and is a main shopping destination as well as a transport hub. There are three levels for platforms and the "Shopville" shopping plaza.  The river Sihl river passes right through the station with platforms passing above and below the river. This shows the general layout of the station with the surrounding tram tracks shown in purple Tracks 3 to 18 are terminal tracks located at ground level, served by two side platforms and seven island platforms. These are used by long-distance trains from throughout Switzerland, and by international trains. Tracks 21 and 22 are underground terminal tracks, served by a single island
Read more

Thursday 21 September - Wrap Up

Image
  Flytoget at Oslo Central I caught a Flytoget express train to Oslo airport. These run every ten minutes throughout the day. Every other one stops at Lillestrom which was convenient as Paul joined me there, (he was staying at a nearby Lillestrom hotel). This is a high speed train which runs from the airport to Oslo Central station in 20 minutes. The trains are frequently crowded. This is an excellent service. Compare this to the "service" OC Transpo will be providing to Ottawa airport. A diesel train a couple of stops to the Trillium line, change to another diesel train to Bayview, then change to the electric Confederation line to get downtown. Tourists are going to love this with their large cases. We took a KLM flight to Amsterdam where  we changed to a KLM flight to Montreal and finally the KLM bus to Ottawa. We had anticipated some problems in Amsterdam with a relatively short transfer but everything worked out to the minute. The cabin crew on the flight from Oslo were g
Read more

Saturday 2 September - The Gotthard and more

Image
  A typical Swiss church with a spire and clock - in Erstfeld We had three objectives today: - - to visit Erstfeld to watch the monthly exercising of the historic electric locomotives. - to visit Goschenen and observes the additional traffic which is now traveling over the old Gotthard tunnel as a result of the accident in the new base tunnel. -to go to Andermatt and come back to Zurich via the Grimsel pass. We took a Giruno train from Zurich as far as Arth Goldau. It was a full train - in fact two trains coupled together - 22 cars. We changed to a local train getting us to Erstfeld just before the demonstrations should have begun only to find out that they had been cancelled and so we took an earlier train to Goschenen - this was a Gottardo  multiple unit train that was pretty crowded.  Erstfeld - Giruno Erstfeld Saturday and Sunday are the days that many Swiss get out to hike in the countryside and most trains are crowded with people with backpacks. The ride up to Goschenen is always
Read more