Argentina's
train network , developed
with British investment from the late nineteenth
century and nationalized by the Perón
administration in 1948, collapsed in 1993 with
the withdrawal of government subsidies. Certain
long-distance services were maintained by
provincial governments, such as the one that
links isolated rural communities between Viedma
and Bariloche in Río Negro Province, but these
tend to be slower and less reliable than buses.
The city of Buenos Aires has a large and
remarkably inexpensive network of trains that
run to the suburbs, into its namesake province,
and to the town of Santa Rosa in La Pampa
Province.
You're far less likely to want to use
Argentinian trains as a method of getting from
"A" to "B", however, than you are to try one of
country's famous tourist trains , where
the aim is simply to travel for the sheer fun of
it. There are two principal tars: La Trochita
, the Old Patagonian Express from Esquel; and
the Tren a los Nubes , one of the highest
railways in the world, which climbs through the
mountains from Salta towards the Chilean border.
A tinpot toy train runs from near Ushuaia in
Tierra del Fuego into the nearby national park,
but it has little in the way of an authentic
feel and as a journey for its own sake is
overhyped.
