Chilean National Railroad (Napoleon's World)

The Chilean National Railroad (Span: ) was the government-owned railroad network that was constructed beginning in 1867 and finished and expanded throughout the 1870's and early 1880's. Envisioned as a way to move troops to and from the volatile north, which had recently been taken by force from Peru in the Peruvian-Chilean War, the railroad was also regarded as an economic catalyst for the movement of mineral and material goods from one end of the country to the next. The initial railroad as it opened in 1874 connected Arica in the north to La Serena, Caldera, Valparaiso, Santiago, Concepcion and Valdivia, ushering in an economic boom in the late 1870's that would be sustained until the Pacific War. In 1879, an additional connection to Puerto Montt was established from Valdivia, and the northern spur stretched from Arica to Sucre in the interior. The national railroad was a major point of pride in Chile as it remained the longest railroad network in South America until the 1890's during the Brazilian and Colombian industrial booms.