Qualla: Comodoro Rivadavia Rail Disaster (1953)

Comodoro Rivadavia Rail Disaster (1953): Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It was supposed to be the easy part of the day. Families had spent a hot February afternoon at the beaches south of Comodoro Rivadavia, and now, with Carnival beginning that night, they crowded aboard the little coastal railcar to ride home. Around a hundred people pressed into a coach built for forty-eight. Late in the afternoon of February 15, 1953, somewhere above the shore near a stretch of coast locals called playa 99, the overloaded car left the rails at speed and went over the edge, dropping down a slope some forty meters high. Thirty-six people did not survive the fall. Sixty-five more were injured. The holiday they had been hurrying toward became, instead, a day Comodoro would never forget.

Comodoro Rivadavia Rail Disaster (1953): The Little Train They Called the Chanchita

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The line ran along the coast between Comodoro Rivadavia and the seaside resort of Rada Tilly, a branch of the Comodoro Rivadavia Railway then operated by Ferrocarriles Argentinos. Its narrow-gauge motor coaches were nicknamed chanchitas, little pigs, half in affection and half in...

Comodoro Rivadavia Rail Disaster (1953): The Fall

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The combination proved fatal. The car was traveling fast, reportedly near 80 kilometers per hour, far too many people aboard, on an unstable narrow-gauge line that hugged the coastal slope. When the railcar left the rails it had nothing beneath it but the drop, and it fell roughl...

Comodoro Rivadavia Rail Disaster (1953): Rescue on a Vertical Shore

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Help was organized at once, but the geography fought the rescuers as hard as the clock did. The steepness of the slope where the car had fallen made simply reaching the victims dangerous and slow, and every minute counted for the injured. Among the dead and the survivors were who...

Comodoro Rivadavia Rail Disaster (1953): The Line That Outlived Its Tragedy

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The railway kept running for another quarter century, but its days were numbered. In 1977, Argentina's military government issued a decree closing many rail services it judged unprofitable, the Comodoro Rivadavia Railway among them. The last train reached Comodoro Rivadavia in Ja...