A comprehensive plan - never completed

Broad gauge pacific no. 355 sits in the shed at Comodoro Rivadavia in 1975, awaiting its leisurely weekly jaunt up to Sarmiento.

Unfulfilled dreams
After the opening of the FCCC in 1888 the Argentine government hoped for the expansion of other railways into Patagonia in order to open up, exploit, and also defend the area from possible 'Chilean aggression.' Despite their very public political clashes with the mainly British owned railway companies the various governments in Buenos Aires had hoped that private enterprise would come up with the money and effort. These were not forlorn hopes, and a number of schemes were planned whilst some reached the statute book if not the ground! An appendix page lists several dozen proposals made between 1894 and 1993.

The failure of the great majority of these schemes to come to fruition resulted from several factors: The Argentine economy was slow to grow during the 1890s; the heated boundary disputes with Chile made potential investors wary of Patagonia until the settlement of 1903; some proposals were in the nature of political bargaining counters rather than serious private enterprise construction schemes; and some relied on mineral resources later found to be less than had been hoped for. Latterly there was also bureaucratic footdragging, for once the government realised that it might have to build the railways itself then any potential competitor (including the FCCC's proposed extension westwards to the cordillera) became a threat to be headed off.

A proposed state-funded broad gauge network
Francisco (Perito) Moreno had suggested in 1896 that the government itself initiate railway building in the south, and Law 3658 of 1897 encouraged surveys and studies with such a plan in mind. However, it took Minister for Agriculture Dr. Ezequiel Ramos Mexia to push the concept forward in the early years of the twentieth century. Señor Jorge Waddell has written in detail on the politics surrounding Patagonian railway proposals (1) but for our purposes Keith Taylorson's book Narrow Gauge Rails to Esquel (2), summarises the situation:

"As early as 1908 therefore, the government had decided to build a number of 'Ferrocarriles de Fomento' (development railways) in the National Territories, powers being granted by Act 5559. These comprised three broad gauge lines, running from Atlantic ports to settlement zones inland, together with links between them to create an integrated network. The northernmost was to run from the port of San Antonio to San Carlos de Bariloche, on Lake Nahuel Huapi, with a branch to Colonia 16 de Octubre (later known as Trevelin) to the south of Esquel. Further south lines would run from Comodoro Rivadavia (an important naval port) and Puerto Deseado, westwards towards Lago Buenos Aires, whence a link would head north to Colonia 16 de Octubre.

Construction of all three lines commenced in 1909, and by 1914 – when work came to a standstill - the San Antonio line had progressed 307km. to somewhere near the present-day Los Menucos, the Comodoro Rivadavia line had reached Colonia Sarmiento (194km.) and the line from Puerto Deseado, Colonia las Heras (287km.). As far as the two southerly railways were concerned, this was destined to be as far as they ever got.

Fired by the possibility of connecting up with the Great Southern (FC Sud) , and providing a through broad gauge route all the way from Buenos Ayres, work continued on the San Antonio line and this reached Viedma in 1925. At the western end of the line, construction had reached Cumallo, only 100km. from Bariloche, by 1924, after which it slowed dramatically, and Bariloche was not reached until 1934."

The full text of Law 5559 is on an appendix page.

The original proposed network
The map left is one interpretation of the proposed network of lines, but should be approached warily, for it has been drawn from a small scale atlas map of 1919 and may not be entirely accurate. On the other hand, I suspect that much of the routes was undefined until the surveyors reached the next area to be pegged out. The atlas showed the dashed lines as 'railways under construction' and the inclusion of a southern trans-Andean line from Bariloche to Osorno under this heading is worth noting!

Commencing construction
The ministry of public works created a 'Dirección de Construcción de Ferrocarriles Patagónicos' under Ing. Guido Jacobacci. Jacobacci himself took charge of the works west of San Antonio. The other two lines were delegated to Ing. Schwartz (Comodoro Rivadavia), and Ing. Giovacchini and later Ing. Juan Briano (Puerto Deseado). Works commenced on all three lines in 1909.

The government at the time was interested in extending the San Antonio line across the cordillera and into Chile to create a coast-to -coast route. An American geologist, Bailey Willis, was commissioned to report on aspects of the area's hydrology and development potential and on possible transport routes. His first report appeared in 1912 (3) but a change of government and subsequent economies meant that his contract was not renewed. Railway routes suggested by Willis included lines from Bariloche to Esquel and north-eastwards to San Martin, Junin and the FC Sud at Zapala. The focus of these was to be a new industrial city at the end of Lake Nahuel Huapi east of Bariloche.

Lack of money and political will
In 1914 most work stopped. As Keith Taylorson summarised in the quote above, the railways had each advanced roughly 200 to 300 km. but were still three isolated units with no connection to each other and no obvious termini reached.

The curtailment of the original plans was not solely due to a lack of cash during the First World War. Dr. Ramos Mexia had resigned his ministerial position in 1913 and his successors lacked the drive to push the proposals to completion. In addition, his original scheme had involved the ministry of agriculture in plans to encourage the settlement of the areas alongside the railways. The ministry of public works, in charge of the railway proposals, never really took this on board so the antipated growth of traffic just did not materialise.

Three sections built
So from the time of the First World War, there was a northern line approaching the Argentinean Lake District, and there were also the two isolated lines further south. The San Antonio railway was only one to be extended further in the '20s and '30s, until it reached the growing holiday resort of San Carlos de Bariloche on Lake Nahuel Huapi and in the other direction was joined to the FC Sud at Patagones. The other lines were more or less forgotten about, running in neglected isolation for the next 60 years.

The original plans for a network linking each of these lines were recast in narrow gauge form after the First War as is explained in Chapter 7 – 'Trocha Economica' or Economic Gauge as the local expression had it. The trans-Andean dream was still very much alive in the 1920s but had reverted to a more northerly course from Zapala, rather than from Bariloche (4). It seems to have been the world depression of the late '20s and early '30s which finally put paid to that proposal.

On the nationalisation of Argentina's other railways in 1948 the San Antonio line naturally joined the FC Sud in the new FC General Roca whilst the other two were combined with the erstwhile FCCC to become the FC Patagónico. The latter was really too small a unit to be operated economically and during the 1950s it too came under the Roca's umbrella.

The letterhead from an FCP form, kindly provided by Sergio Barral, shows how the railway was entitled from 1948 onwards.

Semi-desert, but almost deserted too
As is mentioned above and elsewhere, these lines were not built to serve existing settlements, but to open up the countryside and encourage new settlement. It is quite staggering to realise that even forty years on, the Puerto Deseado to Las Heras line, all 180 miles (283 km.) of it, served a total population of only 7, 000 people! The Comodoro Rivadavia line did rather better with 30,000 in the town, 13,000 in the oil settlements near to the coast and 5,500 along the rest of the 123 mile (197 km.) line. No wonder they were built by the government rather than by private enterprise, and no wonder that the lines struggled and eventually closed in the late 1970s. The wonder is that they survived as long as they did.

The two southernmost lines, like the FCCC, have always suffered from their isolation. To be of any use they must carry goods to and from the cities of the north. This they can only do with the aid of the coastal shipping services, as lorries have no need to transfer their loads to the railway for the last portion of the journey. Unfortunately the shipping services were slow, irregular and unreliable. Goods suffered in transit and there was a distinct lack of user-friendliness about the whole complicated system. Railway reports in the 1950s and '60s continually bemoan (albeit politely) the impossibility of working with the shipping lines. In contrast, lorry services were increasingly seen as fast, reliable and offering a flexible door-to-door service.

An advertisement from Argentina Austral magazine shows the three broad gauge routes plus the FCCC and the connecting bus service to Esquel. The ad. is promoting passenger journeys by sea between Patagonia and the Federal Capital.

A north-south coastal railway?
For many decades there have been calls to link the isolated lines to the north via a new 'trans-Patagonian' north-south line. This would start from San Antonio (Oeste) and run down the coast to Puerto Madryn by way of the iron ore mines at Sierra Grande. A second stage would run on via Trelew to Comodoro Rivadavia, and a third stage to Puerto Deseado. More ambitious dreamers have even envisaged the line continuing south to Rio Gallegos and the Straits. One interpretation of how the first stage line might have appeared is described in the long 1957 FC Patagónico report attached as an appendix. This link goes direct to the appropriate section. Click 'back' to return here afterwards.

With hindsight of course, the single north-south coastal railway is exactly what should have been built at the start. Once reliable road services began to compete nothing else had a hope of surviving. A trunk line through each of the coastal towns - perhaps as far as Rio Gallegos - would still have a useful purpose.

Calls for the 'Trans-Patagonian' railway to be constructed continue to be made by politicians to the present day, but there seems little hope of the government having that sort of money available, particularly for an area offering so few votes in return.

The rest of this chapter
Later pages in the chapter cover each of the three railways in turn, from north to south. For ease of understanding the routes are referred to as the San Antonio Railway (ie Patagones to Bariloche), The Comodoro Rivadavia Railway (C. R. to Sarmiento), and the Puerto Deseado Railway (P. D. to Colonia Las Heras)., For each line there is a general page covering construction route and operations, and a second page dealing with the locos and stock. In the case of the San Antonio Railway the link back to Viedma and Carmen de Patagones gets its own extra page.

References:
1 El Marco Político de los Ferrocarriles Patagónicos. 1999. Paper published in El Ferrocarril de Puerto Deseado al Lago Nahuel Huapi by Hector A. Briano. Editorial Dunken, Buenos Aires.
2 Narrow Gauge Rails to Esquel. 1999. Keith Taylorson.
3 Estudios en la cordillera de los Andes para determinar la línea de unión de rieles San Antonio en la Costa Argentina del Atlántico y Valdivia en la costa chilena del Pacífico. Report by the American geologist Bayley Willis for Ministro E. Ramos Mexia. 1912. Bailey Willis had a distinguished later career as an academic geologist. His papers are now in the collection of the Huntington Library at San Marino in California.
4 Review of the River Plate, Jan 27 1922. Report that Administrator of FCE was visiting Neuquen to see the proposed Trans-Andean route.

27-5-08