"Red Norte" - The Northern Longitudinal Railway, Chile
The metre gauge line extending from a junction with the broad (Iberian) gauge Southern network of the Chilean State Railways at Calera, between Valparaiso and Santiago, and Iquique, in the northernmost nitrate region of the country, was almost 1900 km long, and offered what was almost certainly the slowest journey over such a distance anywhere in the world.
Sparse service
Trains were also not very frequent. The service shown, for the winter of 1957 (Southern Hemisphere), represented possibly the high point of the passenger train offer over this lengthy and hilly line which had multiple summits along its route as well as long desert sections. It is likely that by 1957 virtually all of the trains shown were diesel-powered, although significant steam activity on freight continued for at least another decade.