There are elevators only in a few of the ports.

Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.

Plate XIX.

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The political isolation of Buenos Aires between 1852 and 1862, during the time when the first concessions were issued, made upon the railway system an impression that would not be effaced until twenty-five years afterwards. It was not until 1886 that Rosario was connected by rail with Buenos Aires. The line to Mendoza and Chile, begun in 1870 (F. C. Andino), joins the line from Rosario to Córdoba. It reached Mendoza at the foot of the Andes before going on to Buenos Aires; and it was in 1888 that the Pacific railway was completed between Buenos Aires and Villa Mercedes, and established direct communications between the capital and the province of Cuyo.

The line from Rosario to Córdoba is, therefore, the chief branch round which the Argentine system developed. It is remarkable that at the time of the original concession in 1855 a westward extension was contemplated, and that there was some idea of making it a stage in a trans-Andean. The first concessionaire, Wheelwright, had made the oldest railway in South America, from Caldera to Copiapo, in Chile in 1851. The 1855 concession authorized Wheelwright to extend the Córdoba line westward and link it with the Copiapo line. When he opened the Córdoba station in 1870, Wheelwright, not suffering himself to be discouraged at the slowness with which the line had crossed the Pampa, still said that the goal was the Pacific, by way of Rioja, Copacabana and the San Francisco pass. This ambitious programme deserves to be recalled, if only as a reminiscence of the former orientation of the trade of Rioja and Tinogasta toward the Pacific, and as a proof of the importance, in the imagination of the men of that generation, of the old trans-Andean roads from north-western Argentina.

Even before the Rosario line had reached Córdoba, it had been continued northward as far as Tucumán. The work was pushed vigorously, and Tucumán was reached in 1875. The Córdoba-Tucumán line was the first to be constructed entirely in the region of the scrub, and quebracho sleepers were then used for the first time. The earliest lines of the Buenos Aires province and the Argentine had, on the model of the Indian railways, a gauge of 5 feet 8 inches, but the Central Córdoba, from Córdoba to Tucumán, had a narrow gauge of forty inches. Hence goods coming from Tucumán had to be transferred at Córdoba. At the same time (1875) the line from Concordia to Monte Caseros was opened, and this made it possible to avoid the rapids of the Uruguay, which was to be a source of supply to the whole Mesopotamian system. Its gauge was fifty-seven inches. Differences of gauge are, and will continue to be, one of the characteristics of the Argentine system.

During the period from 1875 to 1890 were constructed the main lines which took the place of the old roads from province to province. The Andean railway reached San Luis in 1882 and Mendoza and San Juan in 1885. Branches of the Central Córdoba reached Santiago del Estero in 1884 and Catamarca in 1889. In 1891 the Central Argentine opened a new direct broad-gauge line from Rosario to Tucumán; and almost at the same time the narrow-gauge line of the Central Norte, from Santa Fé to Tucumán, was finished further north. The Tucumán line was continued northward to the foot of the Andes as far as Salta. In the province of Buenos Aires the Bahía Blanca line was opened in 1884. Since 1900 the railways have pushed on to the frontiers and are linked in various directions with those of the adjoining countries. The Cumbre tunnel on the Mendoza trans-Andean was completed in 1910, and traffic with Chile by rail is now permanent. The Salta line was continued in 1908 to the Bolivian tableland. In Mesopotamia, in fine, the north-eastern line reached Posadas in 1911 and effected a junction with the Paraguay line.

These details, however, give a very imperfect idea of the history of the development of the Argentine railway system. It has not merely been superimposed upon the old roads, but has, on the other hand, helped to open up and develop new lands, which could not have been colonized without it. As early as 1883 Valiento Noailles, examining the general plan of the system, noticed the profound difference between the railways of Argentine and those of Europe. "In Europe," he said, "the railways are constructed to serve existing centres of production and consumption.... Our Argentine railways are to facilitate colonization." Corresponding to each occupation of a new area of the Pampean plain by the farmer or the breeder is the construction in that area of a new network of lines which are fed by its traffic and in turn help it to increase its production. The more productive the region is, the closer are the meshes of this network. They are wider in the pastoral than in the agricultural areas. The period of the development of the southern lines in the province of Buenos Aires corresponds with the expansion of breeding when the Pampa had been pacified. The railway reached Azul in 1876. The Ayacucho branch was opened in 1880, and continued as far as Tres Arroyos in 1887. The completion of the Bahía Blanca line, via Azul and Olavarria, in 1884, is itself merely one of the dates in this colonizing period. The great period of agricultural colonization at Santa Fé and the construction of the system of lines that serve it begin a little later, and last from 1880 to 1890 (extension of the Central Argentine system, the railways of the province of Santa Fé, and the narrow-gauge railway from Rosario to Córdoba).