Lima a Lurfn 2-8-0 Locomotives in Peru

Class Lurin (Locobase 15097)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 44, p. 215. See also Commerce Reports - No 1 -75, Vol I - Twenty-First Year (January, February, and March 1918), United States. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, United States. Bureau of Manufactures (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918), p. 703. Works number was was 46769 in October 1917.

Essentially identical to the Lima a Chilca of 1913 (Locobase 14004) except for the fuel, this oil-burning Consolidation went to another narrow-gauge line heading out of the Peruvian capital. This railway ran 24.85 miles (40 km) to the cotton fields in the Lurin valley. According to Vice Consul Lynn W Franklin's 23 January 1918 report, the the Lima a Lurin had its origins in a desire "...to protect Lima, in event of war, from an enemy landing to the south, as the Iluucho Railway serves to protect the city from a landing to the north."

The line was to be pushed a little further to Chilca, 60 km (37.3 miles) from Lima. Building the railway with defense in mind created headaches. Franklin observed: "[T]he line was run some miles back from the coast among the foothills of the Andes, instead of along the more easily constructed route near the sea. As a result the engineers have had to contend with difficult problems at various points in its development, and the work illustrates In miniature the problems encountered in the construction of all mountain railways."

Construction was pressed hard with the bridge over the Lurfn River being completed in eight weeks (six weeks actual working time).

But Franklin noted some other attraction. The Lurfn Valley was one of the most attractive locations near Lima. He wrote in glowing terms of a "magnificent frontage on the sea, miles of sandy beach, famous ruins in the neighborhood, and the valley itself flowering like a green oasis in the midst of the desert.

Almost 100 years later, Lurfn would describe itself as a "gentle town" that had been able to stave off both immense urbanization and over-industrialization.