Last Train to Texas by Fred W. Frailey

Author:Fred W. Frailey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780253045263
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2019-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

February 9, 10, and 11, 2017 Trains.com

TWENTY FIVE

THE TRAIN TO CORDOBA

“WHEN I WAS A GIRL growing up far south of Buenos Aires,” said the concierge at our hotel in Argentina’s capital, “the trains were so beautiful and fancy. To ride them was an event. Today? Eh! They are nothing.” I had asked her about the passenger train from Buenos Aires to Cordoba, 440 miles to the northwest. “There is no train to Cordoba,” she insisted with utter certainty. An hour later, I returned to our hotel to show her my sleeping car ticket to Cordoba. Being gracious, the concierge said only, “Please tell me about the experience when you return.”

She was wrong in a narrow sense. There is a train to Cordoba. But she was really right. More than 30 years ago, on his trip down the Americas that produced The Old Patagonian Express, Paul Theroux sat for hours in the dining car of La Estrella del Norte (North Star) taking him from Tucuman to Buenos Aires, working on a four-course dinner that cost $2, served by “waiters and stewards . . . dressed more formally than the people eating.” Later, in the heart of Patagonia, deep in Argentina’s interior, he would complain of the cold, ceaseless wind that blew dust through the crevices of his sleeping car. But his description of the little narrow-gauge, steam-powered train that pulled wooden coaches the final miles to the end of the line in Esquel, literally the Old Patagonian Express, is of the stuff that has inspired wanderlust in otherwise sane men and women ever since. I happily accompanied my wife to Argentina as the corporate husband, for the chance to ride that country’s trains. I was seduced by the anticipation of adventure.

Alas, long-distance passenger trains in Argentina have a poor reputation today, one that they appear to richly deserve. Those trains Paul Theroux rode were products of the state-owned railway, Ferrocarriles Argentinos, created when railroads were nationalized in 1948, during the Juan Peron era. In 1993, the railroads were privatized again, and that included the passenger trains. They have not fared well.

Most run only once or twice a week. Equipment is old and sometimes ill maintained. Schedule keeping can be iffy. Search on YouTube for El Gran Capitan clips, and you will be entertained. But the reality is different. El Gran Capitan runs weekly from the capital to Posadas, almost 700 miles north on the border of Paraguay, and the Thomas Cook Overseas Timetable says about it: “This service is reported as running up to 12 hours late on a regular basis. You are advised to take your own water, food, toilet paper, etc.” Daniel Thomas, editor and publisher of Latin Rails, calls this train simply “an adventure.” It may or may not carry the advertised sleeping and dining cars.

You can ride El Bahiense six days a week south from Buenos Aires to Bahia Blanca, about 425 miles, but the last time he did, the journalist Thomas found dirty sheets in his room, atrocious food, and inattentive servers.

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