Abandoned roundhouse and locos in Chile

[Terry Toenges]

This is a neat place. Lots of old cars and some old steamers.

[trainman203]

Unbelievable how much is preserved there. Not in the best condition, but it looks very dry there which means little deterioration.  I really like the Baldwin 2-8-2's, They appear to basically be a catalog design meant for short lines and logging trains common in the early 1920s, there are multiple similar American examples.  I wonder what the track gauge is there, it looks very narrow.  Also incredible is the complete lack of gang type tagging graffiti, imagine what that stuff would look like if it was in the US somewhere.

Unfortunately, all it would take would be one wrong-minded Political revolution to swing things the wrong way for this collection and turn it into scrap. I wish that someone could get those American engines out of there and into the museum that they really belong in.  There certainly are numbers of people who would view all of this as representational of outside foreign big business and political intervention, as well as destructive of environments and native cultures.

[Len]

Technically, the site where all that stuff is located is a museum. Unfortunately, it appears to be unfunded and unmanned.

Len

[trainman203]

Yeh.  Now That it's on the internet all the taggers and scrap vultures will be showing up in droves.

[jward]

It doesn't surprise me that something like this exists in SOuth America. The railroads down there are fascinating. Argentina ran Baldwin SHarks at least until 1980. Ecuador retired GE diesels in favour of bringing back steam because it was easier to maintain. Chile itself supposedly has boxcab electrics on a mining railroad that are close to 100 years old, and when CN abandoned the its narrow guage network in Newfoundland, many of the locomotives made their way to Chile where they are still in operation.


In addition to all of this, the Andes are home to some of the most incredible mountain railroads in the world.