In southwest Bolivia lies a place where it looks as if all the country’s ailing old locomotives have rolled into the wilderness to chug their last chugs – or been struck dead on the spot at the hand of the evil stationmaster in the Earth’s furnace. This gigantic train graveyard – chock-full of the hollow husks and skeletal remains of long forsaken steam engines – is situated on the deserted outskirts of the small trading post of Uyuni, high in the Andean plane some 3,670 m above sea level.