238,129 views
The Antofagasta - Bolivia Railway (FCAB), belonging to the Antofagasta Minerals group, has the longest railway composition that runs on Chilean rails. Located in the Antofagasta Region, service 1212 is nearly 900 meters long, making it the longest train in our country, which transports containers with minerals from the Spence mine to the port of Mejillones. Three GT42AC series locomotives with 3,200 horsepower allow the convoy to move along the Pampa - Prat branch, crossing curves and slopes that are a tangible example of the engineering work that forged the creation of the railway in the northern area, and the summit pass is the sector that presents the greatest feat of railway geography of the Pampa - Prat branch, demonstrating a series of pronounced curves and one of them, a U that allows the tip and tail of the train to be seen a few meters away. This is why I decided to make a continuous film of the entire Paso Cumbre with the train in all its splendor. Although in the southern part of the country there have been multiple trains (two trains with the same destination that have been coupled), due to a series of eventualities and the short railway detours of the southern network, the possibility of seeing long trains in the central-southern part of the country has diminished, resigning us to having trains of no more than 700 meters in length, according to the availability of the railway infrastructure and limited by the condition of the bridges of the network, which have limitations on the weight per axle and make it impossible to directly couple locomotives in certain strategic sectors for the transport of freight by rail.