Tren a las Nubes
Interesting facts
- The line climbs to about 4,220 metres using only spirals and zigzags, with no rack-and-pinion section anywhere on the route.
- The name "Train to the Clouds" comes from a 1960s student film in which steam from the locomotive drifted around the carriages like clouds.
- Feasibility studies for a railway across the Andes from Salta stretched from 1889 to 1916, years before construction finally began in 1921.
- The Polvorilla Viaduct was completed on 7 November 1932, sixteen years before the full line opened in 1948.
- The sculptor Lola Mora, famous in Argentina for her monuments, took part in early surveys for the railway's route across the Andes.
- Regular tourist trips began only in 1972, after an experimental run carrying railway officials and journalists in November 1971.
- A 1978 article by journalist Federico Kirbus, titled "A las nubes en un tren", did much to turn the excursion into a national attraction.
- The full Salta to Polvorilla round trip covers about 434 kilometres on metre-gauge track.
- The railway was privatised in 1991 and taken back into state hands in 2014.
Why it is worth it
The Tren a las Nubes, the "Train to the Clouds", runs over one of the highest railways in the world, on the old C-14 branch of the Belgrano network that climbs from the valley of Salta up to the high Puna. Work began in 1921 under the American engineer Richard Maury, who spent the rest of his life in Salta and has a station named after him; the viaduct that is now the journey's goal was finished in 1932, and the complete line was inaugurated in 1948. To win height on the steep slopes Maury used spirals and zigzags, in which the train runs forward, stops and reverses up the next leg, and the line as a whole counts 29 bridges, 21 tunnels, 13 viaducts, two spirals and two zigzags.
The destination is the Polvorilla Viaduct, a curved steel trestle 224 metres long and 64 metres high that strides across a dry ravine at about 4,220 metres above sea level. From below it looks improbably delicate against the enormous, colourless landscape of the high plateau; from the train, as it creeps across the deck, the ground falls away on both sides. Passengers step down at the far end, in thin, cold air, to walk and look back at the bridge.
The journey today is a combination of road and rail. A bus follows the Quebrada del Toro, the gorge that the railway also threads, from Salta up towards the Puna, stopping at the El Toro viaduct, at the striped rock formations of Yacoraite and at El Alfarcito, before reaching the mining town of San Antonio de los Cobres. There the train takes over for the last hour to Polvorilla and back, and on the return the bus stops at Santa Rosa de Tastil, a village with a small archaeological museum.
Getting there
The excursion starts in the city of Salta, with check-in near the city's railway station; Martín Miguel de Güemes International Airport (SLA) is about 12 km away. The tour bus leaves Salta early in the morning, the train runs from San Antonio de los Cobres to the viaduct around midday, and the return reaches Salta in the evening.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Tren a las Nubes is a tourist train service in Salta Province, Argentina. The service runs along the eastern part of the Salta–Antofagasta railway line of the Belgrano Railway that connects the Argentine Northwest with the border in the Andes mountain range, over 4,220 metres (13,850 ft) above mean sea level, the fifth highest railway in the world. Originally built for economic and social reasons, it is now primarily of interest to tourists as a heritage railway, though cheaper tickets are also available for locals to use the train as transport.
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