The Oroya Railroad

In 1870 Henry Meiggs began building the Oroya railroad, with the goal of linking the coastal cities of Lima and Callao with the high Andes and the silver mines of Cerro de Pasco. This railroad was an amazing feat of engineering. It climbed more than 14,000 feet in only 78 miles with multiple switchbacks, 65 tunnels and 61 bridges. The line was built in seven years by 8,000 to 10,000 Peruvians, Chileans, Bolivians, and Chinese, with the assistance of 600 mules.

The construction of the line reportedly cost Peru 7,000 workers through accident and disease. Landslides, falling boulders, premature explosions and altitude sickness caused considerable delays.(Werlich, 1978, pg. 94)

Starting from the sea, the Oroya ascended the narrow valley of the Rimac through sparse vegetation and masses of torn and twisted rock. The track rose 5,000 feet in the first 46 miles. At first the line climbed through banana groves and fields of sugar cane, with patches of corn and alfalfa. The view narrowed as one entered a valley, its slopes thickly terraced with ruins. There it stopped at Chosica, a sunny resort, before reaching Matucana. Following a winding pathway along the edge of precipices and over bridges, the track tunneled through the Andes at an altitude of 15,645 feet, the highest spot at that time in the world reached by a railroad. This photo taken near Matucana shows one of the steel bridges of the Central Railroad. The photograph courtesy of Håkan Svensson (Xauxa) Peru 1981 (Gnu Free Documentation License, Wikimedia).

Meiggs put William H. Cilley of New Hampshire in charge of the Lima and Oroya railroads. [A Cilley was engaged in 1865 by the Chileans to procure a gunmaker, an Englishman, with a view to founding and constructing guns and cannon. Is this the same person (Trigg, 2002)]

Resources:

Trigg, Angela. 2002. The Life of Daniel Trigg C.S.N. http://cssvirginia.org/vacsn4/original/td1909.htm

Werlich, David P. 1978. Peru: a short history. Carbondale, Ill., Southern Illinois University Press. 434 pp.