Rosario and Puerto Belgrano Railway

Rosario and Puerto Belgrano Railway
Bahía Blanca station building in 1930.
Overview
Native name	Ferrocarril Rosario y Puerto Belgrano
Type	Inter-city
Status	Company defunct; rail lines became part of Mitre and Roca Railways in 1948.
Locale	Santa Fe and Buenos Aires Provinces
Termini	Rosario Puerto Belgrano
Services	1
Operation
Opened	1912
Closed	1948; 69 years ago (1948)
Technical
Track gauge	1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in)
Route map

The Rosario and Puerto Belgrano Railway (Spanish: Ferrocarril Rosario y Puerto Belgrano, and in French: Compagnie de Chemins de Fer Rosario-Puerto Belgrano) was a French-owned railway company which operated a broad gauge, 5 ft 6 in (1,676 mm), single track line between the cities of Rosario and Puerto Belgrano in Argentina. Puerto Belgrano, near the city of Bahía Blanca in Buenos Aires Province, is the main naval base in Argentina. The original idea behind the building of the railway was to link points that were closer to either Rosario or Bahía Blanca than they were to Buenos Aires, thereby taking traffic from the British-owned companies BA Great Southern and BA Western railways.

Since the line was constructed after many other east to west lines had already been laid these were crossed by constructing a large number of bridges. The otherwise near level course of the line was broken, at intervals, by short sharp gradients and this had an effect on the type of locomotives that could be used. In spite of this a considerable volume of goods and livestock traffic was carried by the line.

The original concession for the construction of the railway was granted to Diego de Alvear with the promulgation of Law N° 4.279 of 1903. That concession was then transferred to French-owned company "Sociedad Anónima Compañía del Ferrocarril Rosario a Puerto Belgrano" in December 1906. The concessionary was committed to build a dock in Puerto Belgrano, terminus of the line.

The Indian gauge 800-km. length railway ran from north to south, joining the cities of Rosario, Santa Fe and Punta Alta, crossing most of the main British-owned railway tracks. The railway had also a particular path with no stops in Buenos Aires but other cities of the Province such as Coronel Pringles and Coronel Suárez. The costs of construction were high so the railway required several engineering, for example the seven iron bridges that cross the Sauce Grande River, near Bahía Blanca.