And here is Thomas Shinkfield and family, wife Molly (my grandmother) and eldest son Noel. Taken on the FCAB station in Antofagasta in August 1925; the comment on the back sums it up "as usual the male members of the family contrive to look as comic as possible". After all this is the desert and not the sea front at Redcar.

My first sight of the FCTT, a single boxcab leads its loads through the back streets of Tocopilla

From the port the railway climbs through the backstreets of Tocopilla. In December 2004 two of the General Electric boxcabs, 80 years old in 2007, are on a train of empties bound for Maria Elena

A shot of the same pair of boxcabs, with 607 Alexandra leading, on a short loaded train. 607 has new cab windows giving it a strange spaced out look.

This sign (in English) is at the Quillagua passing station on the mountain section. At Reverso, 7kms from Tocopilla, the line uses a switchback to gain height, a common trick in Andean railroading.

Loads arriving in Quillagua. SQM is the trade name for Soquimich, the Chilean Chemical and Mining Company, who have owned the railway since 1968.

Just time for a picture, taken by the second driver

The empties round a bend on a ledge above the parallel highway.

An empty nitrate gondola

The landscape is lunar-esque, especially in the late afternoon light.

The boxcabs grind up hill towards Barillles.

The elderly locos pass our Hi-lux

On our earlier visit in 1998 the electric locos were still in the brown Ferrocarril Tocopilla al Toco (FCTT) livery. Here a late afternoon train of empties climbs to Barrilles.

Another empty being photographed by my fellow traveller, Robert.

Empties on the climb towards Barrilles

This is the train seen in the second picture. Following the switchback at Reverso 607, with the wide eyed look, is now in the lead.

Arriving at Barrilles. The catenary is strung as far as Tigre but this is the location of the engine changes

The box cabs are cut off

A pair of box cabs waiting to leave Barilles for Tocopilla. The extraordinary nature of the landscape is quite apparent.

Barrilles looks rather like a minature version of yards, such as Deer Lodge, on the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Extension, also electrified by GE in the teens and 20s.

At Barilles the box cabs give way to an elderly GE diesel.

A loaded train gets underway.

Having reversed at Reverso, the box cab leads its train into Tocopilla, withthe Pacific Ocean beyond.

Tocopilla is an open roadstead port, there's no enclosed harbour. Freighters lie offshore and are either loaded by lighter or from the bulk loader installed in the 1950s. The train is crossing the highway which links Tocopilla with the Pan American (and offers railfans the oppportunity of following the railway). The smoke drifting from left to right is from the power stations which were originally built in the 1920s to serve the copper mine at Chuquicamata. Today they generate much of the electricity used in the First and Second Regions of Chile, and are a major employer in Tocopllla.