Chile today and tomorrow

by L. E. Elliott Joyce

Chile possesses 8600 kilometres or 5375 miles of railways, of state and private ownership that, running throughout her main territorial length north and south, and connected with the sea by a number of transverse lines, serve her better than any other South American country is served.

The rule all over the continent is that the seaports are the chief points where population is grouped and that from these ports railways have been driven inland as pioneers opening new country. Many of the regions thus served are immense, as a glance at the map shows; great fans of steel rails spread from Buenos Aires, S. Paulo and Montevideo, for example. But these lines were built to serve, and do almost exclusively serve, the needs of special localities lying inland from a coastal point, and only in a few instances are these regions systematically linked to the rest of the country.

The construction of Chile’s great longitudinal services was forced upon her, luckily, by the peculiar topographical form of this part of South America. All the long folded ribbon of the Central Valley is a natural highroad, and the railways follow very ancient trails.

From Tacna, in 18° of south latitude, lines run almost continuously to Puerto Montt at the edge of the Gulf of Reloncaví in 41′ 50″ of south latitude, a distance of about 1500 miles. From this great main artery of traffic touching all the important producing regions of the Central Valley, branches run west from thirty different points to the Pacific; the length of these connecting links is short, averaging 30 to 50 miles.

To the east a number of small lines extend to serve mining or agricultural regions, and three long arms have been flung across the mountain barrier of the Andes. One of these, the Transandine line, forms the only existing railway system connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of South America, the distance from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires totalling 1444 kilometres, or 896 miles, the journey taking two days.

The second line climbing the Andes is that extending from Antofagasta to La Paz in Bolivia, 863 kilometres or 518 miles. The third also runs to La Paz, from the former Peruvian port of Arica, a distance of 433 kilometres or 260 miles.

The policy of the Chilean Government as regards railways had its beginning in 1852, when President Manual Montt inaugurated construction of a line to unite Santiago and Valparaiso, a cart road built by Ambrose O’Higgins then serving these two important and growing cities. In a straight line the distance between Santiago and the port does not exceed 55 miles, but the coastal range rises in this region to unusual heights, and in order to negotiate the crest a curve was made northward passing by Limache, Quillota and Llai-Llai, the length totalling 187 kilometres, inclusive of the section now forming a part of the great longitudinal system. The first part of the line completed, between Valparaiso and Viña del Mar, was opened to traffic in 1855; the extension to Limache, in 1856; to Quillota, in 1857; construction of the San Pedro tunnel, together with delays resulting from the revolutionary troubles of 1859, held back completion of the extension to Calera until 1861; Llai-Llai was reached in 1862, and the whole line opened to traffic through from Valparaiso to Santiago in September, 1863. A new line is now planned to follow a shorter route via Casablanca.

At the same time that this sea-to-capital link was commenced the Government authorised the construction of a main line running south by a private company, the Ferrocarril del Sur, while in the north a number of railway enterprises were also undertaken by individuals or companies, chiefly with the object of serving mineral regions. The majority of these companies were capitalised in London, although the concessions were in some cases obtained by American promoters such as Henry Meiggs, afterwards well known in connection with Peruvian railroad building, and the genial William Wheelwright. Hundreds of young British and American engineers entered Chile at this period of early construction, while native-born Chileans still lacked technical training, and scores of them remained in the country permanently, settling and founding families. It was a tremendous era of building which lacked coherence but nevertheless was intelligent and forceful; every strip of line had its sound raison d’être, served its immediate purpose, and not only marked an industrial movement but remains today as a permanent contribution to the transport needs of Chile.

Actually the first railway line to operate in Chile was the Copiapó line running from that celebrated and then flourishing copper mining centre to the little port of Caldera, 55 kilometres distant. Construction was begun in 1850 and the line was opened to traffic in 1852, the Copiapó railway thus achieving its place as the second oldest railroad in South America. First place belongs to the Demarara line in British Guiana.

By the time that the Valparaiso-Santiago railway was completed the southerly trunk line had been pushed as far as San Fernando, with extensions surveyed to Curicó and Talca. Curicó was reached in 1867 and was promptly sold by the private constructors to the Government of Chile, already marking out its continued policy of state ownership of transportation systems. Until about 1870, when both imported and native coal began to come into use, the fuel burnt by the locomotives of the central sections was Chilean wood, a circumstance which was material in helping to destroy the woodland of Central Chile.