Railway Museum Santiago
Open-air steam locomotive collection featuring a surviving Andes-crossing rack engine.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Railway Museum in Santiago follows locomotive 3349, built by Kitson's in Leeds in 1909 for the Transandine Railway, one of the steepest rail lines ever laid across the Andes. You'll hear about the rack-and-pinion gearing bolted beneath it to climb past Aconcagua, and about brothers Juan and Mateo Clark, who spent twenty-three years building the line from 1887 onward promising a fast shortcut to Buenos Aires. It traces the railway's struggles with snow and landslides through to the trucks and airplanes that eventually took over its traffic.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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