SOUTH AMERICA: A freight train crossing the Andes
October 2027
Up to 30,000 tourists travel annually on the Tren à las Nubes (Train to the Clouds) from the small San Antonio de los Cobos station to the La Polvorilla viaduct. Most of these visitors won't know what they're missing outside of this section of the line. I suspect they won't care much either :-)
The tourist train only runs on a small section of the Salta–Antofagasta railway line, which connects the Argentinian city of Salta with Antofagasta on Chile's Pacific coast. The entire Argentinian section of the line is about 450 km long and, in my opinion, highly spectacular! Apart from the incredible mountain scenery of the Andes, which forced the engineers to achieve engineering feats with bridges, tunnels, viaducts, loops, and hairpin bends, the line towards the Chilean border runs through a completely Martian landscape. A red desert with absolutely no human life. No roads, no cell phone reception, no houses. Plus, several salt flats...
In the good old days, there were weekly sleeper trains between Salta and Antofagasta, along with plenty of local and freight traffic. Almost nothing of that remains today: a single weekly pair of freight trains runs between the two endpoints – and only when needed.
My plan: to charter an authentic mixed train and run it as a photo charter on the Argentinian section of the route. Until the mid-1980s, a mixed train with freight and sleeper cars ran between Salta and the border station of Socompa, which serves as the blueprint for our train. There will be more images possible than the memory cards can handle...
The Chilean section is also very spectacular, but we have neither the time nor the money for another 330 km of track. Therefore, I want to limit myself to Argentina and only go as far as Socompa (a mere 3,858 m above sea level).
The matter is, of course, highly complex. Thanks to the new president in Argentina, the railway company is facing unprecedented challenges, and a new, private operating company may take over operations. The idea of photo charter trains is a foreign concept to many managers and, occasionally, even railway workers. I will privately visit the line in 2026 and check all issues. After that, I will be able to say with greater certainty whether a Trans-Andean photo freight charter has a realistic chance of being run... or not.
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