Trans-Andean Railroad

The Kiat

The Kiat

How early could a railroad across the Andes be built? I know a transcontinental railroad would not have the same obsticle it had in North America, not with ships being able to steam so far up the Amazon, but would the Andes be that much harder to bridge than the Rockies?

Would Brazil (let's just say they gobbled up Peru during the collapse of the Spanish Empire. I'm not interested in the details or plausability, so just humor me) be able to build that railroad? I always figured it took so long for one to be built because of the lack of an industrial base in South American states more than because the technology didn't exist.

How long would the railroad be useful as a short cut from Pacific to Atlantic before the Panama (or whatever) Canal opened?

From an internal political view it might be desirable, but would it do world trade as a whole any better than a railroad across, say, Costa Rica?
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

A railway across e.g. panama is fairly easy, all things considered. No high mountains, short distances, etc.

Also, both sides of the isthmus are easily accessible by full sized ocean ships, whereas a RR over the Andes would have to transfer on to barges for the long trip up the Amazon.

Note that the head of navigation on the Missouri river is Great Falls, Montana, which is not very far from the Columbia ... but thats not what was used for the first or even second or third, transcontinental RR in north america.
 

Hoist40

Banned
The Panama Railway ran the first train between coasts in 1855.

A railroad across Brazil/Peru would probably be done in large part for political reasons to tie the two together similar to the desire to tie California to the rest of the USA.
 
Misanthrope

Misanthrope

The Kiat said:
How early could a railroad across the Andes be built? I know a transcontinental railroad would not have the same obsticle it had in North America, not with ships being able to steam so far up the Amazon, but would the Andes be that much harder to bridge than the Rockies?
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I didn't think it could be feasibly done at all, but after looking around, they might get around to completing it AFTER the Panama Canal opens, maybe in time for WWII.

The Kiat said:
Would Brazil (let's just say they gobbled up Peru during the collapse of the Spanish Empire. I'm not interested in the details or plausability, so just humor me) be able to build that railroad? I always figured it took so long for one to be built because of the lack of an industrial base in South American states more than because the technology didn't exist.
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Be able to? Sure. But to go coast to coast probably wouldn't be done.

The Kiat said:
How long would the railroad be useful as a short cut from Pacific to Atlantic before the Panama (or whatever) Canal opened?
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Besides Panama's cross ocean railway in the 1850's, I really doubt this could get done before the canal opens.

The Kiat said:
From an internal political view it might be desirable, but would it do world trade as a whole any better than a railroad across, say, Costa Rica?
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I really think by now it possibly would have fallen apart or been decommissioned, or be just used as a link between Western (Peru) and Eastern Brazil.
 
Kaiphranos

Kaiphranos

Donor
The Kiat said:
Maybe, but if you go too far south to build it, you might as well steam through the Strait of Magellon.
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Hmm, I guess by the time steam technology is advanced enough for railroads to be feasible, it's also good enough to make passage around Cape Horn or through the Straits less iffy. Still, perhaps there'd be some incentive for Chile to connect to the Platine basin by land?
 
Misanthrope

Misanthrope

The real problem with getting to the other side of the Andes from Peru is then what do you do? It's a lonnnng way from the crest of the Andes to Manaus and the coast. This is going to be a Trans-Siberian RR level project.

23714962.png


The red line what was built OTL with dates.
The Blue and Tan lines are my best estimate of how you could get through the rest of the Andes to the Amazon valleys.
 

Kevin C. Smith

You have several variables at work in picking where to run a transcontinental railroad between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans...
1-The length of the sea voyage. The farther south you go, the less time you save cutting overland.
2-The cost of rail transport. Rail is the most efficient and lowest cost way to ship bulk overland but water is cheaper yet. If you have a railroad between two ports, the water competition will be imnportant.
3-Cape Horn. This skews things, in general, toward overland vs. oceanic shipping because of the hazards involved.

Now, how do these play out?
The Panama Railroad had several advantages: It was far enough north that trasshipment saves weeks, if not months, of travel time. That offered a competitive alternative (note that water transport around Cape Horn has never really ceased). As you move south, not only does the overland route vastly lengthen but the portion of the water route that is no longer used becomes shorter. So, just as the water mileage saving diminish, the land mile costs actually increase.

Also, Panama has a much lower mountain summit to cross. That and the shorter route saves millions in construction, maintenance and operating costs (and time). That affect competitiveness of a Trans-Andean route.

Politically, you will also have to get Chile/Peru to agree with Argentina/Brazil (depending on your preferred route) on how to apportion costs and revenues. Construction and operation (the question of gauge is paramount) methods may end up being sources of conflict. The Panama RR had the advanage of operating entirely withing one country, under one management

Finally, a trans-Andean rail line is merely a connecting link midway between endpoints that are not in either country to begin with, which may affect incentive to invest.

I think your best bet would be to try and replicate the conditons that helped in the construction of the first US and Canadian transcontinental RR's:
-Endpoints that have a trade relationship to each other (Eastern manufacturers/midwestern farmers and California settlers/buyers).
-Land along the way that needs rail access for internal developement (US prairie lands, Nevada mines; mineral deposits in the Rockies, Sierra Nevada, etc.).
-Political support over the period of construction (at least a decade, maybe two).
-Adequate finance to finish the job.
-Adequate labor.

The advantage that the US/Canadian transcontinentals had was having all of these factors present in the same social, political and economic unit. Splitting them up between two (or more), often contending countries is going to cause no end of difficulties.
 
The Kiat

The Kiat

I had an idea for a railroad from Iquitos (a village at the time, and eventual home to a rubber boom) to Guayaquil (the railroad would be useless without a decent harbor on the Pacific side) for the rewritten AHN. Obvious, it'll take many years to complete and almost be obsolete by that time thanks to railroads across Central America. I think it'd still be somewhat useful when the technology is developed to extract difficult to reach minerals from the Andes.


Kevin C. Smith said:
<essay>
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Thank you kindly for giving me something to think about. I'm trying to address some of those issues.
 

Kevin C. Smith

The Kiat said:
I had an idea for a railroad from Iquitos (a village at the time, and eventual home to a rubber boom) to Guayaquil (the railroad would be useless without a decent harbor on the Pacific side) for the rewritten AHN. Obvious, it'll take many years to complete and almost be obsolete by that time thanks to railroads across Central America. I think it'd still be somewhat useful when the technology is developed to extract difficult to reach minerals from the Andes.




Thank you kindly for giving me something to think about. I'm trying to address some of those issues.
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Thank you, too, for summarizing my post as "essay", rather than "rambling"! :D

I think you have a possibility of things with mineral access on the Pacific side and the rubber boom on the Brazilian end. The former may lead to a slower but steadier developement (along the lines of, say, Rhodesia or-don't quote me here-South Australia). The other side of the line, through Brazil, might attract initial capital during the Rubber Boom (booms, by definition, tend to attract all sorts of capital) but I fear that's too late for a transcontinental line to compete with the Panama Canal. Also, when the boom goes so will the money. You may have to shift to state support afterwards.

One other thing I forgot to mention that you'll have to look at is population growth. If there is no one to populate the interior of Brazil, I can't see any way to make a railroad to the interior viable, even as a state enterprise.
 
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The Kiat

The Kiat

Kevin C. Smith said:
One other thing I forgot to mention that you'll have to look at is population growth. If there is no one to populate the interior of Brazil, I can't see any way to make a railroad to the interior viable, even as a state enterprise.
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That's a big problem. I don't think the Amazon's soil is all that good (stuff grows so well because leaves start to decompose before they hit the ground), and wouldn't make for good farming. Rubber tree plantations, sure, but not the best place in Brazil to homestead.

Perhaps the potential mineral wealth of the Andes would be a motivator for a coast-to-coast Brazil to develop infrastructure in the Amazon, since most of Brazil's population, and thus industry and workers, will be in the east. The Amazon itself is a mighty fine highway, and railroads leading into the mountains could fuel industry back east.
 

Kevin C. Smith

The Kiat said:
That's a big problem. I don't think the Amazon's soil is all that good (stuff grows so well because leaves start to decompose before they hit the ground), and wouldn't make for good farming. Rubber tree plantations, sure, but not the best place in Brazil to homestead.

Perhaps the potential mineral wealth of the Andes would be a motivator for a coast-to-coast Brazil to develop infrastructure in the Amazon, since most of Brazil's population, and thus industry and workers, will be in the east. The Amazon itself is a mighty fine highway, and railroads leading into the mountains could fuel industry back east.
Click to expand...

Yeah, neither half of the US transcon was built for an existing railhead (the UP from Omaha, ferrying across the Missouri River and the CP from Sacramento, upstream from San Francisco Bay). Many early railroads (1820's-1830's) were built as adjuncts to canals-and to this day bulk freight often leaves rail for water at the earliest opportunity (Mississippi barges, Great Lakes freighters).

You might want to try pushing this in stages. Start with some early surveys/interest in a shortcut avoiding Cape Horn (up the Amazon and then by rail over the Andes)-say 1850's/1870. Follow that with a period of interest in exploiting any mineral resources in the mountains-1870's/1900?. If you can avoid too much conflict, some competition to control the flow of supplies in/product out of the area could stimulate interest in construction. At some point, Brazil (and maybe Peru, too?) supports construction as a way of tying their outlying provinces to more closely to the nation as a whole (ala' the Canadian Pacific Railway) 1870's-1880's?. Throw in the rubber boom and, before that, some period where the Amazon rainforests are mistakenly believed to be fertile country like the eastern US to complete the milage on the Brazilain side. What to do with Peru, I don't know... With enough false starts, you might get enough strung together to complete a railroad from the head of navigation on the Amazon to the Pacific coast by circa WWI?

As my knowledge of the political, financial and social conditons of the time and area are pretty much nil, all this is wild speculation, of course.
 
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