I remember riding in a coach attached to a freight train across some hundreds of miles of sand and sage bush, an impossible region from an agriculturist's point of view.
"This is an unprofitable stretch," I remarked to the railway official who was my companion.
"Not at all," was the reply; "you see, we have a full load, and we get paid mileage, whether we run through good or bad land."
That is one of the causes of railway profits in Argentina: the enormous distances freight often has to be carried.
It was not my lot to travel over all the railway systems in the Argentine, but I travelled over the most important of them, and from first to last I was enthusiastic. The rolling stock is excellent; the permanent way is better than over similar country elsewhere, and as for the comfort of the passengers it is certainly unsurpassed. Frankly, I often felt like rubbing my eyes in order to make sure I was "roughing it" in Southern America.
| INTERIOR OF DINING CAR, CENTRAL ARGENTINE RAILWAY. |
Nowhere, out of Russia, have I seen the coaches so admirably adapted for small or large parties. You can have a section of a coach self-contained, dining-room, bedrooms and bathroom, suitable for families; and meals can be supplied from the buffet. If you travel over a certain distance you cannot miss having a buffet car; the law insists. Also the law insists on dormitory coaches on the all-night journeys. They are more commodious, because on most of the lines the gauge is wider than in England. There is none of the uncomfortable sleeping behind curtains, with, maybe, a stranger in the bunk overhead, and then having to wash in the smoking-room, which the long-suffering men of the United States put up with under the notion they possess the most luxurious travelling in the world. When you come to "special cars," a thing we know nothing about in England except for royalty, the United States comes first, but I would say Argentina is a close second.