World’s Most Dangerous Railways

 1.Tren a Las Nubes (Argentina)
The construction of the railway started in 1921, to connect the North of Argentina with Chile across the Andes, and to serve the borax mines of the area. The viaduct La Polvorilla, the highest of the line, was finished on 7 November 1932. The complete railway was inaugurated on 20 February 1948, but it was not until the late 1970s that it started being visited by tourists. The route was designed by American engineer Richard Fontaine Maury, after whom one of the stations has been named.

 2.White Pass and Yukon Route (Alaska/Canada)
Depending on how you look at it, the history of the railroad in America is either one of industrial triumph in the face of the odds; or one of exploitation and degradation, forging a powerful nation over the bodies of immigrant labourers. The White Pass and Yukon Route is no exception. Built to get prospectors into Klondike with (hopefully) fewer casualties, the 110 mile line was assembled in two years – including a 3,000ft ascent over 20 miles. Unsurprisingly, this meant working all winter long in some of the harshest conditions imaginable. Temperatures fell as low as minus sixty, with workers spending a frozen February at the very top of a mountain. There was even a murky shootout in the town of Skagway, involving the railroad company and a local crime-boss; an operational hiccup it’s hard to imagine happening anywhere but Wild West-era America. -

3.Canadian-Pacific Railway (US/Canada)
For all it advanced the emerging American economy, the Canadian-Pacific Railway was a milestone in exploitation that showed how hollow the ‘America Dream’ could be even then. Famously, when the line reached the Rockies, it was said that four Chinese labourers died for every mile of track laid. Those that survived were often scurvy-ridden, roped into the most-dangerous of jobs, and often denied hospital treatment in event of an accident. Thanks to the ugly spectre of racism, the negligent conditions of the job often spilled over into outright cruelty: expenses were deducted from Chinese earnings, reducing the work to near-unpaid slave labour. The families of those killed were often denied compensation or not even informed of their relative’s death. In all, it was a vicious, barbarous project: one that brought extreme wealth to a limited few, at the cost of hundreds of lives.