Qualla: Tren de las Sierras

Tren de las Sierras: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY 4.0. Count the times this railway has been declared dead. Closed in 1977. Abandoned again in 2001. Stripped of its concession in 2004 for rusting track and broken promises. By any reasonable measure, the Tren de las Sierras should be a memory by now, the kind of thing old men in Córdoba describe to grandchildren who have never ridden it. Instead the diesel cars still climb out of the city each morning, rattling north through the Punilla Valley toward the mountains. This is a line that refuses to stay buried.

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Image: Unknown author | CC BY 4.0

Tren de las Sierras: British Iron in the Argentine Hills

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Santiago matamoro, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first train ran on July 2, 1889, hauling freight and passengers from Córdoba toward Cruz del Eje. It belonged to the Córdoba North Western Railway, one of the British-owned companies that laced Argentina with steel rails in the boom decades before the world wars. Ownership ch...

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Image: Santiago matamoro | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tren de las Sierras: The Golden Decade

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by the uploader, Roberto Fiadone, CC BY-SA 3.0. The 1960s were the line's golden age. Trains arrived crammed with holidaymakers from Córdoba, Rosario, and Buenos Aires, all bound for the resort towns strung along the Punilla Valley at fares cheap enough that ordinary families could afford the mountains. The Sierras Chicas rose...

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Image: Taken by the uploader, Roberto Fiadone | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tren de las Sierras: Death by Privatization

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dario Alpern, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 1990s brought a peculiarly Argentine experiment. Under President Carlos Menem's privatization drive, the line passed to Grupo Alcázar, a consortium whose previous ventures included running the Córdoba Zoo and a racetrack. Trading under the name Aero Ruta, they revived the rou...

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Image: Dario Alpern | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tren de las Sierras: The Stones and the Comeback

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ezarate, Public domain. Resurrection came in 2007, when the state poured ten million dollars into reopening a short stretch between Rodríguez del Busto and La Calera. Diesel-electric cars, built in Portugal and rebuilt in workshops at Chascomús, returned to the rails. The route crept forward year by yea...

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Image: Ezarate | Public domain

Tren de las Sierras: A Slow Ride Worth Taking

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by the uploader, Roberto Fiadone, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today three morning trains leave Alta Córdoba bound for Cosquín, with departures returning through the afternoon. End to end, the journey runs two hours and twenty-four minutes, which is rather the point. This is not transport for the impatient. The reward is the unhurried unspoo...

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Image: Taken by the uploader, Roberto Fiadone | CC BY-SA 3.0