Trasandino Argentino Kitson-Meyer Locomotives in Argentina

Class Z (Locobase 20298)

Data from "The Transandine [sic] Railway", Locomotive Magazine, Volume 16 (15 February 1910), p. 26. See also Ian Thomson, "The Transandine Railway: a Hundred Year Long Financial Disaster that Still Attracts Investors", pp. 1-8, archived at [], last accessed 21 October 2017.

See Locobase 20297 for a full description of these unusual rack & adhesion Kitson-Meyer locomotives, which were perhaps overendowed with cylinder volume when they included both a "small" rack engine forward and a larger rack engine under the rear bogie.

Ian Thomson's typically well-informed and well-written account includes the observation that "Nature has never been a friend of the Transandino." Locobase 20294 briefly outlines the 70 km on the Chilean side of the summit. In Argentina, the Transandine's 179 km (111 miles) started westward from Mendoza and for 131 km offered grades gentle enough to allow adhesion-only operation. Even the 48 km of occasional Abt rack sections sloped only at about 6% compared to the Chilean sides 8 1/2%.

Even so, Thomson describes the Chilean-Argentine Transandine as "an operating nightmare" that, when in steam, "was difficult and costly".

He reports that these Zs, while complicated, were successful, long-lived locomotives.