Argentine steam

Surprised this hasn't been mentioned on here as it's popped up numerous times on Facebook over the past couple of weeks.....



An interesting selection of stock behind it as well!

 

Its surely a Robinsons lost great central Pacific design

 

Thanks for posting that video. A Class 12E Pacific of the former Buenos Aires Great Southern Rly?

Prior to nationalization in the 1940s, some of the major Argentine railways were British-owned and had British-style loco fleets. The Class 12E has a couple of unusual features, being a 3-cylinder machine (fairly rare outside Europe) and being a Pacific with a narrow firebox (although the 5ft 6in gauge makes it less narrow than elsewhere).

I've attached an extract from "British Steam on the Pampas" by D S Purdom.

 

YT video of a recent test run......

 

Nice. After a bit of online digging around, that loco was at Ferroclub Argentino's workshop at Remedios de Escalada in 1999... I think I visited that place in 2002, so I probably saw this loco. Not in steam though!
But what I really enjoyed most about this video was the signalling. Yes, it's rusty and probably falling apart, but it's wonderful.

(The only loco I saw in steam in Argentina was North British 4-6-0 121 at San Carlos de Bariloche. Sadly didn't get to go on it but my travelling companions did; I had one less week of leave, so had to catch the bus back to Buenos Aires that day. Anyway, I took photos of it chuffing away then went to catch the overnight bus. The train, apparently, ran out of fuel and the passengers were rescued by a fleet of Land Rovers. My bus also broke down, repeatedly, in the middle of nowhere, which extended the journey time to something like 24 hours... I was glad I'd booked a night in a hotel and not a tight connection onto a flight!)

Lovely people, massive sparsely populated country and not much in the way of spare resources for restoring steam engines, so what they do achieve is amazing.