Santiago Steam Train Museum

Saturday March 28, 2009 we, and our friends Ron and Eileen
Gonzales, visited a large park in Santiago, that has the national
railroad museum and other things to see. Across the street from
the parking lot is an art museum in a beautiful building that
could probably be converted into a Greek Orthodox Church
without too much work. We did not visit the art museum
yesterday. Maybe next time....



The railroad museum has sixteen old steam engines in it. They
are all about 100 years old. Most were built in Germany, then
assembled in Chile. Chile got off to a bad start in the railroad
business, in that they began with three different gauges (width
between rails). With that setup, they sometimes had to transfer
freight from one train to another to get it to the intended city.






Here is the front of the museum building that has some displays of railroad items in it. Also the bathrooms....

This steam engine and its attached railcar looked like it might have been a private railcar of a railway executive. It could have been the early 20th century version of a pickup truck and travel trailer.

Here were a couple of young ladies trying to sneak aboard this railcar.

We are shown sitting inside a 1906 passenger car that had stained glass windows above the clear windows. We had to duck in here for a while to cool off. It is fall in Santiago, but it was really hot outside on March 28th.

This engine seemed to be a yard switch engine, sitting on a turntable. Chile has some rail lines going now. One of these Saturdays, we are going to ride the bus and the subway to what is called the "Central Station," then take a train ride out to Rancagua and back, just so we can say we rode on a train here in Chile.