About this journey

Salta station sits at the northern end of one of Argentina's most ambitious railway projects: the metre-gauge Ferrocarril General Manuel Belgrano network, whose trunk line extends all the way to Antofagasta in Chile. Construction of that route began in 1921, driven by the need to link northern Argentina with Chile across the Andes and to serve the borax mines of the Atacama region. The line was designed by American engineer Richard Maury, and the complete cross-border railway was inaugurated on 20 February 1948.

The Salta–Güemes section forms the opening stretch of a 941 km single-track, non-electrified line that eventually climbs to 4,220 metres at La Polvorilla, a point cited as the fifth highest railway in the world. On these same tracks the renowned Tren a las Nubes tourist service departs toward the high Andes, and freight trains carry minerals including lithium carbonate, borax, and brine from the Atacama. The suburban run to Güemes shares all of that infrastructure, making it a quieter passage over rails that carry an outsized variety of traffic — a calm, lowland prologue to one of the most extreme railways on Earth.