CROSSING A CONTINENT.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10488, 22 June 1910, Page 1

CROSSING A CONTINENT.

THE TRANS-ANDINE RAILWAY

Witli the piercing of the long-de-layed Audi no tunnel has come completion of the first trans-continental railway in South America. -An excellent description of this remarkable line is given by an enterprising New Zealand ladv joiirnalist, Miss Constance Barnicoat, in "Travel and Exploration." The: railway has brought the Chilian port of Valparaiso within 36 hours of Buenos Ayres, the Argentine capital.. Formerly Valparaiso was reached either by rail to Las Cuevas, and thence bv a drive or mule ride over a pass 12,797 ft high, in air so rarefied that many people became ill and actually' sick from the effects of it, and thence bv train again.; or else by a steamer 'journey of about 3500 miles round the. Horn. It was also possible to reach it via the United States, but there was no convenient way of transporting passengers, and still less of. ti unsporting merchandise. - Now the Chilian city is hardly more than a three- week's journey from London by irav of Buenos Ayres, and already new and fast liners are being put on the River Plate route. The tunnel which links the Argentine and Chilian railway system is nearly two miles long—to be precise, 1 mile 1520 yards —and it is at a height of 10,500ffc 'above the sea. Yet it is not, as is popularly supposed, __ the loftiest railway in the world. In Peru there is a railway which runs from Callac- to Lima . and on to Oroya. It threads in and out of intricate Andean »t-i "'os. and passes along the edges oi precipices. With its 63 tunnels, it ■picices the mountain chain at a height of over 15,000ft-. Another railway in Peru, from Arequipa to Puiio, r £in Lake Titicaca, crosses the mountains by a cutting 14,660 ft above the sea. Compared," however, with European mountain railways, the new Trans-Anduro is enormously high. The Simplon ronlv 2312 ft above sea level, the St. Gothard 37S0ft, and the .Arlborg 1310 ft, against the Traus-.-iiidme s 10 500 ft. In length the European tunnels "Tcatly outdo .-the Trans-Andmo. T>>e Siiuplon' is 12V miles, the St. Gothard »S, the Mont Conis 7A, and the 'vrlberg 01-. to its 2 miles. llie cost of the railway on the Chilian and A'-o-entiiie s idos has boon about '£3")00,000, and its history dates bacK to 1874. when the first concession was obtained for along line from Mondoza.. in the Argentine, to the Chilian boundary on the top of the Andes. V. ork on" this side was begun in 188-, and. not until 1903 on the Chilian side In November last the tunnel was bored through, and on April 5 the first tram ran through it. . Mi>s Barnicoat tells oi the cumcuities which had to be overcome. -"-t that altitude snow falls more or .os* for a great portion of the year and in winter it occasionally lies m driits Alitor 30ft deen. Powerful votary ploughs, obtained from the pniteo States, will he used to maintain a thrr.ui'h service of trams m winter, and the line has to be protected in places bv' shedding. Provisions and ctores have also to be carefully covered. For live months in the year the workmen were practically prisoners, am... labor has been hard to get, and very expensive. About 1500 men worked in the tunnel in three eight-hour shifts. The Italians, on whom the Swiss rely mainlv for tunnelling, proved rather a failure, and in the end Chilian peons wore found to be the best workmen, enduring cold, wet, and exposure tar better than Italians. During the last two years a good many English minors were'also employed. One great trouble was with the water, winch got into the tunnel—cold snow water, in which the men had sometimes to stand up to their knees for hours together. jho cold Andean winds, sweeping down m the afternoons, also caused a great deal of lung disease. As the Andes are of comparatively recent formation, the rock cut well, but directly it was exposed to the weather it crumbled. Consequently much more lining had to lie done to 'the tunnel than was expected. Fortunately, it was possible to bore it almost straight, so there was no need of artificial ventilation, as m the Swiss tunnels. The air simply blows straignt through it. There is always a risk oi landslides and snow slides on the line but wherever such risk occurs the railway has a kind of snowshed built over it.' This is very strong and substantial. Over it the boulders —sometimes as big as a house —the snow, earth., and other debris can shoot without damage to the trains. For a narrow-o-auge railway the engines are unusually powerful, being six-cylinder Kitson's. weighing between SO and 90 tons, and capable of drawing a 160ton train ui> an 8 per cent, grade. Thev cost, delivered in Chili, about •£7OOO each. The railway is rack, worked with vertical cogs, and is probably the only rack railway m the world which has to contend with such severe conditions of frost and snow. The two principal stopping-places between Buenos Ayres and the tunnel are Mendoza. a 'picturesque town in the centre of a flourishing wine district, and Puente del Inca (Inca'sbridge), named after a natural causewav'of stones and rock, cemented into a solid mass through the action of carbonate of lime and oxide of iron from the thermic springs used as health baths since old Pica days. From Pnento del Inca expeditions start to climb the mighty peak of Aconcagua. Now that the railway has come the old road over the pass' will probably fall into disuse, and Trans-Andine travellers will seldom see the famous statue of "Christ, the Redeemer/' exactly on the frontier at the summit of the riass. >.