WORLD'S HIGHEST RAILWAY

Evening Star, Issue 23352, 23 August 1939, Page 16

WORLD'S HIGHEST RAILWAY

HAS DIESEL LOCOMOTIVE SPECIALLY BUILT FOR IT An outstanding achievement of British engineering enterprise is the building of a Diesel locomotive to run on the highest railway line in the world, near La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. The engine has now passed all tests, including the six-mile climb with a gradient of 1 in 14 along a series of sharp “ S ” curves from La Paz to the plateau 2,000 ft above the city and 16,000 ft a bow sea level. Built for the Peruvian Corporation, it will operate on a circuit where conditions are so severe that engineers have hitherto believed them to be beyond the powers of such an engine, which they thought would prove so cumbersome and costly (compared with the present electric traction) as to be economically unworkable. The Peruvian Corporation consequently placed a number of safeguards in its contract, and a firm in Leeds, Yorkshire, accepted the “ challenge.” The engine it built has now proved able to handle its load with ease at the highest altitudes of the torturous mountain track, and to be exceedingly economical on fuel. Special features of the locomotive are: Supercharged engine. 33ft horse-power, with exceptionally large radiator to maintain an efficient temperature at high altitudes where air density and conductivity are greatly reduced; inde-pendently-fitted additional starting system, petrol-driven, to avoid any possible delay ; and a nuadrunle system of brakes, working independently.