Virtual Railfan Tour of Chile - Into the mountains

 

Last time we took a steam excursion north of Santiago to Los Andes.  On the right hand side here there was a vehicle which looked like a heavily modified narrow gauge road vehicle.

We took this on the narrow gauge line westwards into the mountains and ultimately into Argentina.

Los Andes

I think the "steering wheel" was actually a throttle similar to some European practices.

Into the mountains

Our destination was Rio Branco

Rio Branco

The car was turned on the turntable at Rio Branco

There was another photo runby on the return to Los Andes

A number of you asked questions/made comments about the electric locomotive seen in the previous blog.  Bill Collins has an explanation as follows:

About the large electric engine, 2903, in one of your shots.  It certainly was from the batch built by GE for Russia, as part of the U.S. post-war aid program for the U.S.S.R. (built to five-foot gauge, and dubbed "Little Joes").  You likely know the story.  About the time the engines' construction was finished, Cold War stuff got dicey and the delivery got canceled.  Next - where's a home for them to go?  Well, of the twenty of them, five of them went to Brazil, a dozen ended up on the Milwaukee for its electrified sections in Montana and Idaho, and the remaining three were bought by the Chicago South Shore & South Bend, out in Indiana. So what you saw obviously got saved from scrapping, was bought at some point and shipped to Chile.  That's something I hadn't known about before, and now wonder whether it was the sole import - or whether there were more of the originals that went south.