One of the two lines, 88 km long, part rack-operated, and originating in Tocopilla on the coast, heads east inland, negotiating some reverse switchbacks on the way, and reaching nearly 4000 m in altitude. It was part electrified in 1927. It still operates today, and still to the 1067 mm gauge, although part of the original electrified section appears to have reverted to diesel motive power.
The other line, 180 km long, started out from Taltal, again on the coast, and this line too ran inland. The line was not electrified, and closed in 1957.
Metros and trams:
Four cities in Chile have metros or trams – and even they manage to encompass three different gauges! (And that is not counting the funiculars, which add various other gauges.) Valparaiso has what is in essence a single line 1676 mm gauge metro system of some 43 km in length, opened in 2005, and which replaced an earlier suburban railway network.
Concepción’s 1676 mm gauge metro is in fact a part of the main-line railways, and uses the same ex-RENFE rolling stock.
Unlike Valparaiso and Concepción, Santiago’s system, part elevated metro, part underground, is all to Standard gauge – including its French-inspired rubber-tyred trains. At 103 km long, the second longest in Latin America after Mexico City, it consists of five lines, with a sixth and seventh under construction. It was first opened in 1975.
Three lines – Lines 1, 2 and 5 – are based on the VAL rubber-tyred system used in Paris and other French cities, with the auxiliary guide rails inside the concrete rollways to 1435 mm gauge. The trains are slightly modified versions of those used in Paris. Whether conventional steel-wheeled trains run on the auxiliary rails – as happens in Paris (see Part 2) – is not known, but would appear to be unlikely.
Lines 4 and 4A are conventional Standard gauge lines, while Lines 3 and 6, under construction, will also use Standard gauge steel wheels on steel rail.
Finally, the town of Iquique has a heritage tram line, to 1067 mm gauge.
ARGENTINA
Like we saw in Chile, Argentina has a multiplicity of gauges. And, again like Chile, there appears to be little prospect of the country’s railways settling on one particular gauge. In total, five gauges are to be found, four of which still have extensive route distance in operation.
In many ways, the railways in Argentina set the standards – including track gauges – of much of the railways in the southern part of South America. The numerous cross-border links with the country’s neighbours, especially with Chile, ensured that a large degree of commonality – particularly in terms of track gauge – was inevitable. The prevalent gauge (though far from the only gauge) for Argentina’s main-line railways though was not Standard gauge, and for rather unusual reasons.
In the early years of the 19th century, the British of course were building railways – and exporting their railway technology – around the world. But they were particularly active in the Americas, especially in South America. Argentina became a focus for their activities in building railways in what were still very undeveloped lands. In spite of the fact that these lands were far away from home, the British were the true pioneers in bringing railways to Argentina, to the point that most of 19th century Argentina’s economic life was controlled by the British, either directly, or indirectly through the operation of the country’s railways.
In fact, a past Argentine ambassador to Britain, one H E Mario Cámpora, once boasted that ‘every child in Argentina is taught that the railways unified the country, and that it was the British which gave Argentina her railways’. (No doubt these are words that would probably not be heard from a modern-day Argentinian ambassador!) Yet, notwithstanding the heavy involvement of the British, Argentina’s first railways were not Standard gauge.
In other Parts of this book, we came across a number of instances where a country’s railway gauge (or gauges) affected the outcome of a war, such as how Hitler’s attempts in World War II to invade Russia were thwarted by the gauge difference between Russia’s and Germany’s railways (see Part 1 for this story). In the case of Argentina, the reverse was true – the outcome of a war affected the country’s main railway gauge.
The Crimean War, fought predominantly in the Ottoman Empire (in what is today the Ukraine), was one of the first wars in which the railway was used for tactical purposes. The railway used in that war was built by the British, under the direction of the famous explorer and Chief of Staff, Sir Richard Burton, and manifested itself as the Grand Crimean Central Railway.
The first section of this railway was needed very quickly to transport troops and their supplies from the port of Balaclava, on the Black Sea, to Sevastopol, to support British and French offensives against the Russians in the Siege of Sevastopol. It was built by Samuel Morton Peto, a contractor who secured an agreement from the British government to build it at his net cost, and in a remarkably short space of time.
Within three weeks of arriving at Balaclava, Peto had the first train running. Within seven weeks, 15 km of railway had been laid, some of it double-track, with an eventual total of 23 km. With time being of the essence, Peto could not afford to wait for British manufacturers to supply him with motive power and rolling stock to order. Instead, Peto was able to requisition locomotives and rolling stock destined for use on India’s 1676 mm broad gauge railways. The Grand Crimean Central Railway thus ended up being built to the Indian broad gauge purely as a result of this expediency.
This railway was rather short-lived however, and was to function for just two years. Once the Crimean War had ended, the Grand Crimean Central Railway, in 1856, was literally dismantled lock, stock and barrel. Rails, sleepers, locomotives and rolling stock all became surplus, and were put up for sale.
The British builders of Argentina’s first railways were able to acquire this surplus equipment at a knock-down price, comprising what was in effect a complete railway, and proceeded to re-assemble it in Buenos Aires, thus decreeing that the Indian gauge of 1676 mm should also become the gauge of Argentina’s first railways. The first locomotive, La Porteña, having completed her stint in the Crimea, started work in Argentina in the following year, 1857.
[Some have disputed this story, saying both the gauge and the timeline are wrong. However, there is no dispute that La Porteña worked the first trains in Argentina in the late 1850s (the locomotive is currently on display in the Enrique Udaondo Museum of Luján in Buenos Aires, and contemporary photographs clearly show the engine at work in Argentina), while there would appear to be no other logical reason why Argentina’s railways were first built to the 1676 mm Indian gauge and not Standard gauge. For the moment I tend to think that the story as told above is a true account of how Argentina’s railways came to be built to the Indian broad gauge.]
As is usual (though, as we have seen on quite a few occasions, not always), the gauge of the first railways in a country becomes the predominant gauge for all subsequent railway development in that country, and Argentina was no exception. All the new lines that started to radiate out from Buenos Aires in the 1860s were built to the same 1676 mm broad gauge, even though they were built by a number of quite separate companies. The lessons of Britain’s gauge wars two decades earlier appear to have been learnt.
From the 1860s onwards, everything required for the building of Argentina’s fledgling railways – stations, trackwork, bridges, signals and signal boxes, workshops, and of course motive power and rolling stock – was imported from Britain. Even Buenos Aires’ La Plata Central Station was imported as a complete building (having been originally earmarked for India, until unrest in that country made it available for use in Argentina).
The British didn’t stop at just building railways either. They may have been profiting from Argentina’s natural resources and huge potential for passenger traffic, but they also made sure that the railways were the catalyst for Argentina’s economic growth throughout the remainder of the 19th and well into the 20th century, particularly in enabling the shipment of mineral and agricultural products to the coastal po
rts for export.
By the end of the 19th century, most of Argentina’s 1676 mm gauge railways, and over two-thirds of Argentina’s entire railways, were owned and operated by what were known as the Big Four British-owned companies – the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway, the Central Argentine Railway (these two being by far the largest railways in Argentina), the Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway, and the Western Railway Company. They were all listed on the London Stock Exchange.
There were a number of smaller British-owned railway companies as well, such as the Northern Railway of Buenos Aires, the Buenos Aires and Ensenada Railway, and the Buenos Aires and Rosario Railway. These were eventually taken over by and absorbed into the Big Four. Most were built to 1676 mm Indian gauge, making it easy to integrate them into their new owners’ systems.
Not all of Argentina’s British-owned early main-line railways were however built to the Indian broad gauge. For example, the East Argentine Railway, bucking the standards set elsewhere in Argentina, decided to build its railway to 1435 mm Standard gauge, as it was intent on forging rail links with neighbouring Uruguay, which was already using this gauge (see Uruguay below). Other railways in the northern and eastern parts of Argentina were also built to Standard gauge for similar reasons.
The East Argentine Railway was eventually taken over by the Argentine North Eastern Railway, founded in 1887, and which too had already built its railways to Standard gauge, most likely because the other railways in this part of Argentina were already built to Standard gauge. The use of this gauge even affected the subsequent gauge of Paraguay’s railways (see Paraguay below).
The British also built main-line railways to metre-gauge, the third gauge to be found in Argentina. Quite why this particular narrow gauge was chosen (and not, say, 1067 mm Cape gauge) is not clear, although the most logical reason was the necessity to link up with 1000 mm gauge railways in Chile, not to mention the reduction in costs for what were rural railways with low traffic in difficult country.
The extent of the British involvement in Argentina’s railways was really quite phenomenal – the following list of the British-owned railways that existed prior to around 1930 shows just how far the British controlled things in Argentina:
1676 mm Indian gauge:
Argentine Great Western
Bahía Blanca & North Western
Buenos Aires & Campana
Buenos Aires & Ensenada Port
Buenos Aires Great Southern
Buenos Aires Northern
Buenos Aires & Pacific
Buenos Aires & Rosario
Buenos Aires & San Fernando
Buenos Aires Western (the first railway)
Central Argentine
La Boca and Barracas Railway
Santa Fe & Córdoba Great Southern
1435 mm Standard gauge:
Argentine North Eastern Railway
East Argentine Railway
Central de Buenos Aires Railway
Entre Rios Railway
1000 mm metre-gauge:
Argentine North Western
Argentine Transandine Railway Company
Buenos Aires Midland
Central Chubut (until 1920)
Córdoba Central (until 1939)
Córdoba North Western (until 1909)
Córdoba & Rosario
By the 1930s, although starting as early as the 1880s, almost all of these companies had coalesced into the Big Four mentioned above. These huge railway conglomerates were operating around 40 000 km of broad gauge railways, which, along with the Standard and metre-gauge lines, put Argentina’s railway network well into the world’s top ten countries in terms of route distance.
The British didn’t have it all their own way, however, even in the early days. The French found some niches in which they could build railways, to both 1676 mm and 1000 mm gauges. One French-owned line was the metre-gauge Ferrocarril Compañía General de Buenos Aires, which ran from Buenos Aires to Salto. There were break of gauge connections with two British-owned broad gauge lines.
The following are the four main French-owned lines before the 1930s:
1676 mm Indian gauge:
Rosario y Puerto Belgrano
1000 mm metre-gauge:
San Cristobal a Tucumán
Compañía General en la Provincia de Buenos Aires
Provincial de Santa Fe (after 1900)
The Argentines themselves built a number of railways to compete with the British, or, in some cases, actually nationalised British-owned lines outright, either directly by government decree, or by taking them over when they ran into financial difficulties. For example, the Ferrocarril Central del Chubut was a British-owned metre-gauge line in the Patagonia Province that was built in the 1880s, and then taken over by the Argentine state government in 1920.
The following are the Argentine government-owned railways that existed prior to 1948:
1676 mm Indian gauge:
Oeste (first railway, government-owned between 1857 and 1890)
Patagónicos
1435 mm Standard gauge:
Central de Buenos Aires
Central Entrerriano
Primer Entrerriano
Rural de la Provincia de Buenos Aires
1000 mm metre-gauge:
Ferrocarril Andino
Ferrocarril Argentino del Norte
Central Norte
Central Chubut Railway (after 1920)
Córdoba Central (after 1939)
Córdoba North Western Railway (after 1909)
Ferrocarril Provincial de Buenos Aires (FCPBA)
Provincial de Santa Fe (until 1900)
The fourth gauge to be found in Argentina in any significant quantity is that of 750 mm. The Ferrocarriles Patagónicos built the 750 mm gauge branch line from Ingeniero Jacobacci to Esquel, in the southern part of the country known as Patagonia. This line was colloquially known as ‘La Trochita’ (‘The Narrow Gauge’), and stretched for some 400 km, quite a long way for such a small gauge. Interchanges with the broad gauge main lines resulted in some interesting trackwork (see pictures below).
The fifth and final gauge is that of 500 mm. Just 25 km in length, the Southern Fuegian Railway is known as ‘The Train to the End of the World’, and is claimed to be the southern-most railway in the world. Originally built as both a freight line as well as a means of transporting prisoners (where it was known as the Ushuaia Prison line), today it is a tourist railway.
Argentina may have been quite happy before the 1930s to have not owned too much of its own railway system, but in the decade before the outbreak of World War II, changes were on the horizon. There was increasing disquiet throughout the country that having so much of its railways foreign-owned was perhaps not in the country’s own best interests, and certainly not its economic interests. The growing unrest eventually culminated in a revolution.
With the government already owning a number of once privately-owned (primarily once British-owned) railways by the end of World War II, the easiest thing to do was to wrest control of all the country’s railways (and other areas of the Argentine economy, such as land, banks, etc.) from the British.
On the 1st of March, 1948, President Perón nationalised all of Argentina’s railways that hadn’t already been taken over in previous years (coincidentally 1948 was the same year that the British government nationalised all of Britain’s railways). In one fell swoop, the whole of the British-owned interests in Argentina’s railways evaporated. To the Argentine population, this was cause for great celebrations, and was symbolic of the country’s quest for economic freedom and the rejection of ‘economic imperialism’. The British were quite sanguine about it, deciding that perhaps the on-going ownership of so much of Argentina’s railways would eventually become a source of rancour between the two countries (as it happened, disputes regarding ownership of the Falkland Islands ensured that this was going to happen anyway).
The British were compensated, by the forgiveness of some debt as well as a co
ntroversial cash settlement, given by Perón, it is said, for ‘sentimental reasons’. Perón may have hated the British generally, but, it seems, not quite absolutely. The French-owned railways, which were, possibly inadvertently, caught up in this nationalisation, were also compensated.
But nationalisation had little effect on the railways themselves, and certainly no attempt was made at all to standardize Argentina’s railways, at least in terms of their gauges. The newly nationalised railways were grouped into six state-owned companies, roughly according to their gauges, comprising the following:
metre-gauge network, primarily the Belgrano line in north and central Argentina;
Standard gauge network, primarily the Buenos Aires suburban and inter-city Urquiza line;
four Indian gauge networks, comprising the majority of Argentina’s freight lines, as well as some passenger services.
Consequently, Argentina had, and still has, to contend with a disparate rail network up and down the country. The continuing existence of three main gauges (1676 mm, 1435 mm and 1000 mm) does little to encourage long-distance rail travel, or the easy movement of goods between various parts of the country.
But all that may be about to change. As we have seen in so many other parts of the world, the Chinese are keen to export their technology (along with some financing attached to it) to Argentina. Main lines, light rail and underground railways are all within China’s sights as targets of both investment and the export of Chinese technology, with a total of ten separate projects identified and even agreed upon, totalling some US$10 billion. How far these projects will go to rationalise Argentina’s gauge differences remains to be seen – is it really that keen to once again relinquish the control over its railways that was so hard-won from the British over 60 years ago? And Argentina’s economy is in very poor shape, which may also mitigate against any major infrastructure projects, whether funded by the Chinese or not.
The Americas Page 2