Virtual Railfan Tour of Peru - Peru Central Railway 1997 - part 1

 

This is the main station in Lima in 1984.  Didn't look too promising but in 1997 I joined a railfan tour of this line out of Lima
I found this map of the system in the station. The main line (standard gauge) actually starts at Calleo on the coast west of Lima. We will then climb up into the Andes, over the highest railway in the world at that time, and finally reach the mining town of La Oroya. From there we will continue to Huancayo and look at the narrow gauge line to Huancavalica.  Before returning to Lima we will go over the Cerro de Pasco Railway

A Canadian built diesel at Callao

No. 206 is a 2-8-0 now at San Bartolome - shown here at Callao in 1997

Callao

No. 20 in the bushes at Callao. No details.

For our trip in 1997 we had our own train. I think regular passenger service was still suspended because of guerilla activity. Our train came equipped with a nurse and oxygen to assist travelers with altitude sickness.

At San Bartolome our locomotive had to be turned

Puente Carion

Puente Carion

One of the many zig zags as we climbed into the Andes

Visio

At Visio we met a down bound freight

I was invited ito the cab

In the train the nurse was busy with a patient

We were allowed to ride, anywhere on the locomotive

This is a BBC video made in 1980

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

Journey to Zurich Hauptbahnhof, Dolderbahn, Wiedikon and Wallace Fountain

Image
 Tuesday 23 August Paul and I travelled to Zurich on Air Canada via Toronto. The flight from Ottawa was over an hour late - luckily we planned for this with a three hour connection in Toronto. Toronto airport was disgusting. It was overcrowded and there was nowhere for people to stand while waiting to board their flights. Obviously the Toronto airport focusses on relieving passengers of their money. Once aboard the plane things went well. There was plenty of space for carry on and the flight was excellent. It seems that the problem with airline travel is the airports rather than the flights. Our flight landed four minutes ahead of schedule (Wednesday) which was 0800. By 0820 we had cleared passport control and by 0840 we had taken a connecting internal tram and found the tram to downtown. We could have taken the SBB trains but we were in no great hurry and we enjoyed the 35 minute tram ride to close to the hotel. At Gladbrugge we passed two SBB 6/6 locomotives on the main line close by
Read more

Coming Home - Wrap Up - Sunday 15 Setember 2024

Image
This video, by Noel Wyler,  shows what we have just missed. Last Saturday (14 September) the Oensingen Balsthal  Railway organized an event to commemorate 60 years of the Re 4/4 locomotives. They brought together 24 of them and ran them as one train. Paul and I flew home on KLM from Schiphol Airport. We took a train from Den Haag directly to the airport. The trip back was marred by a couple with a young boy who was obviously teething. He cried almost continuously for the full six hours. I found I could tune him out when I dug deep into the KLM sound system and found a treasure trove of classical music. Bach violin concertos, Mozart piano concerto No. 23, Beethoven symphonies, Schuman etc. We survived the stupidities at the entrance of the Montreal airport and caught the KLM bus back to Ottawa where we arrived precisely on time. A good ending to a wonderful, tremendous, trip  
Read more