Railways

Abstract

The construction in Chile of the second railway to be built in South America, after a line in British Guyana, was started in 1849, on a fifty-mile track linking silver and copper mines inland of Copiapó with the port of Caldera. On December 25, 1851, a train traveled the entire route for the first time. The original initiative was taken in 1845 by Juan Mouart, who may have been British (probably Scottish)—John Mouart (see Santa Cruz 1968; Thomson 1999). This concession was purchased by William Wheelwright, the American engineer who had made his name by founding the British PSNC company, and the Copiapó Railway Company was established in October 1849. Initially, most of the shareholders were Chilean, and the company remained Chilean throughout its history. However, by the early 1880s, following the War of the Pacific, the majority of shares were in British hands. One of the first engineers to work on the line was Charles Wood, the Englishman famous for designing the Chilean coat of arms. This line closed in 1978, after almost 130 years of operation.

The following morning we started gaily, und passed the Biobio [railway] bridge with interest, for it measures 1864 metres, and is, I believe, the longest bridge in the world except those over the Tay and the Forth, and a wooden bridge over the Oxus built by General Onnenkoff

—Theodore Child, Harper’s Weekly, 1891