About this journey

Retiro station in Buenos Aires serves as the northern terminus of the Belgrano Norte line, part of the largest railway complex in the city. The line runs on metre-gauge track — 1,000 mm between the rails — and stretches 55 km across 22 stations to its outer terminus at Villa Rosa. Its origins trace to 1903, when the British-owned Córdoba Central Railway received authorisation to extend into Greater Buenos Aires; the first trains ran in 1909, and the connection to Retiro was completed in 1912. The state acquired the railway in 1939 and folded it into the General Belgrano Railway in 1948, before Ferrovías took over operations under a private concession on 1 April 1994.

Leaving Retiro, the cab passes over the Puente Saavedra, a railway bridge carrying the tracks across Maipú Avenue, before threading northward through the suburban districts of greater Buenos Aires. The GM G22-CU locomotive hauling today's service belongs to a fleet that was reinforced in 1980 when 20 additional G22 units were built locally by Argentine company Astarsa. Closer to Villa Rosa, the line passes through Pilar Partido, where Cecilia Grierson station — named after the first woman to receive a medical degree in Argentina — opened in January 2024 after more than a decade of construction delays, marking the most recent addition to a line that has expanded steadily since its earliest days.