MEIGGS’ MASTERPIECE—THE V-SWITCH, BY MEANS OF WHICH THE RAILWAY IS LIFTED FROM ONE LEVEL TO ANOTHER, SHOWING TURNTABLE AND METHOD OF OPERATION
THE INFIERNILLO BRIDGE
It is approached at either end through a tunnel, and owing to the precipitous cliffs the men had to be slung out from the sides in rope loops and cradles to set the steel.
A HORSESHOE CURVE IN A TUNNEL
The train enters the lower mouth, describes a semicircular turn in the heart of the mountain, and emerges from the upper portal.
The embankment on the outside of the track at the point he had gained was levelled off, and a small turntable was erected. From the latter two short lines were laid down at an angle to the track in the form of a widely opened “V,” with the turntable at the apex. The main line cuts across the top of the “V,” forming a triangle, and continues a short distance beyond. The manner in which the train is lifted from the one level to the other is as follows. The engine pulls it up the lower line on to the section crossing the top of the V, and in such a way as to be between its two angular limbs. The engine is uncoupled, and runs down one leg of the V on to the turntable, which is then swung round until the engine faces the other arm of the V, up which it passes until it gains the main line. It is now at the rear of the train which it was pulling a few minutes before. The engine is coupled up, and the train is pushed backwards until it is over the switch connecting with the upper level. It then proceeds forward in the usual manner. In reality it makes a zigzag course up the mountain-side.
This ingenious means of overcoming such a difficulty was tried first at San Bartholomé, and proved so very economical and simple a solution of a grave difficulty that it was freely introduced by the inventor whenever similar conditions were encountered. True, the process of uncoupling and recoupling the engine occasions a little delay, but the switch was cheaper and quite as effective as a loop, even if the latter could have been built, for it was found possible to lay the turntable between two tiers of metals on a gradient not exceeding 1 in 25. Altogether there are 22 of these switches on the system. The majority of them are of the simple type as we have described above, but in some cases there is a double zigzag when the difference in level was extreme, and did not permit of the connecting bank line being raised at an easy grade. The adoption of the “Meiggs V-switch,” as it is popularly called, saved the engineer thousands of pounds.
In one case the switch is set in a very precarious situation, for the climbing line winds along a perilous ledge blasted out of the solid flank of the peak, and the traveller’s heart thumps every time the train lurches as he looks down upon the curling river far, far below on the one, and the mountain wall combing some 2000 feet above him on the other, hand. The Oroya line has been described as a railway of sensations, and it is an apt description. During the process of “V-ing” a train the voyager has ample opportunity to contemplate his peculiar situation at leisure.