This ingenious means of overcoming such a difficulty was tried first at San Bartholomé, and proved so very economical and simple a solution of a grave difficulty that it was freely introduced by the inventor whenever similar conditions were encountered. True, the process of uncoupling and recoupling the engine occasions a little delay, but the switch was cheaper and quite as effective as a loop, even if the latter could have been built, for it was found possible to lay the turntable between two tiers of metals on a gradient not exceeding 1 in 25. Altogether there are 22 of these switches on the system. The majority of them are of the simple type as we have described above, but in some cases there is a double zigzag when the difference in level was extreme, and did not permit of the connecting bank line being raised at an easy grade. The adoption of the “Meiggs V-switch,” as it is popularly called, saved the engineer thousands of pounds. In one case the switch is set in a very precarious situation, for the climbing line winds along a perilous ledge blasted out of the solid flank of the peak, and the traveller’s heart thumps every time the train lurches as he looks down upon the curling river far, far below on the one, and the mountain wall combing some 2000 feet above him on the other, hand. The Oroya line has been described as a railway of sensations, and it is an apt description. During the process of “V-ing” a train the voyager has ample opportunity to contemplate his peculiar situation at leisure. “Highly ingenious and simple,” was the verdict of the railway world when they realised Meiggs’ handiwork. “But what is going to happen if a descending train runs away at one of these switches? Will it make a bee-line for the bottom of the canyon through the air, or pile up against the dead-stop?” Meiggs, however, did not anticipate trains running amok in this manner, but he guarded against any such contingency, because brakes sometimes will fail to act on a descending grade. Consequently, at the end of each line in a V-switch he provided a substantial bank of earth. This was a fortunate precaution. Some years ago a train, in proceeding from the upper to the lower level, did run away on the falling bank. It crashed into the solid embankment at the dead-end, and came to a stop in an ungainly, heterogeneous mass of twisted ironwork and splintered wood. Nobody was hurt, the debris was removed, and the runaway engine was recovered, overhauled, replaced in service, and is running to-day, little the worse for its misadventure. Owing to the peaks of the Cordilleras being separated from one another by yawning ravines, extensive bridging became imperative. Some are short, insignificant spans; others are lofty, spidery structures, which were completed at the expenditure of many human lives from disease and accident. As a matter of fact, the railway earned an unsavoury reputation owing to the high mortality that attended its realisation.