Richard Fontaine Maury (

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

, 18 December 1882 – Córdoba, 10 July 1950) was an American railway engineer and naturalized Argentine. He became known for the project of the Argentine "Ramal C-14" of the

Ferrocarril General Manuel Belgrano The General Manuel Belgrano Railway (FCGMB) (Spanish: Ferrocarril General Manuel Belgrano), named after the Argentines, Argentine politician and military leader Manuel Belgrano, is a railway and the longest of the Rail transport in Argentina, A ...

and the touristic '' Tren a las Nubes''.Biography of Richard Maury
/ref>

Early life

Richard Maury was born in Philadelphia in 1882, as the second of four brothers. He was the son of Thompson Brooke Maury. He graduated from Virginia Military Institute as an engineer in 1902. His first work was on the Pennsylvania Tunnel

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

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Career

In 1906 he arrived in Argentina to join in 1907 the ''

Argentine State Railway Argentine State Railway (in Spanish: Ferrocarriles del Estado) was a State-owned railway company of Argentina, established by Law N° 6.757 in October 1909, when José Figueroa Alcorta was the President of Argentina. The company built and oper ...

'', the national railway company of the country. In 1921, the "Ramal C-14" Salta-Socompa, a project to build a rail line to the

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

an border was approved. Maury was appointed the head of the project. He worked there until 1931. On July 12, 1928, he was appointed honorary professor at the National University of Tucumán, where he also published, in 1929, he published ''Manual para el trazado de ferrocarriles'' (i.e. "Manual for the railway tracks").''Manual para el trazado de ferrocarriles''
on

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He was declared the first honorary member of the Engineering Center of Tucumán in 1944. Maury worked on the Transandine Railway from Mendoza to Las Cuevas, Argentina, on the road from Acheral to Tafi del Valle, and the railway line Yacuíba- Santa Cruz- Sucre, in Bolivia.

Personal life

He married Carmen Rosa Pauna with whom he had one child, Ricardo Juan. Richard Maury died in Córdoba in 1950 and, since 1957, his remains are buried at the foot of a monument dedicated to him in the station of Campo Quijano, a town near Salta in the

Salta–Antofagasta railway The Salta–Antofagasta railway, also named Huaytiquina, is a non-electrified single track railway line that links Argentina and Chile passing through the Andes. It is a railway with a total length of 941 km (571 in Argentina and 330 in Ch ...

. A little village and its station, part of this line and originally named "Damián M. Torino", were renamed "Ingeniero Maury" (Engineer Maury) after him.Ingeniero Maury page
on Salta Province website

Literature

*Richard F. Maury: "''Manual para el trazado de ferrocarriles''". National University of Tucumán, 1929 - 312 pages

References

External links