THE EARLY RAILWAYS 221 



(F. C. Andino), joins the line from Rosario to Cordoba. 

 It reached Mendoza at the foot of the Andes before 

 going on to Buenos Aires ; and it was in 1888 that 

 the Pacific railway was completed between Buenos 

 Aires and Villa Mercedes, and established direct com- 

 munications between the capital and the province of 

 Cuyo. 



The line from Rosario to Cordoba is, therefore, the 

 chief branch round which the Argentine system 

 developed. It is remarkable that at the time of the 

 original concession in 1855 a westward extension was 

 contemplated, and that there was some idea of making 

 it a stage in a trans- Andean. The first concessionaire, 

 Wheelwright, had made the oldest railway in South 

 America, from Caldera to Copiapo, in Chile in 1851. 

 The 1855 concession authorized Wheelwright to extend 

 the Cordoba line westward and link it with the 

 Copiapo line. When he opened the Cordoba station in 

 1870, Wheelwright, not suffering himself to be dis- 

 couraged at the slowness with which the line had 

 crossed the Pampa, still said that the goal was the 

 Pacific, by way of Rioja, Copacabana and the San 

 Francisco pass. This ambitious programme deserves 

 to be recalled, if only as a reminiscence of the former 

 orientation of the trade of Rioja and Tinogasta toward 

 the Pacific, and as a proof of the importance, in the 

 imagination of the men of that generation, of the old 

 trans- Andean roads from north-western Argentina. 



Even before the Rosario line had reached Cordoba, 

 it had been continued northward as far as Tucuman. 

 The work was pushed vigorously, and Tucuman was 

 reached in 1875. The Cordoba-Tucuman line was the 

 first to be constructed entirely in the region of the 

 scrub, and quebracho sleepers were then used for 

 the first time. The earliest lines of the Buenos Aires 

 province and the Argentine had, on the model of the 

 Indian railways, a gauge of 5 feet 8 inches, but the 

 Central Cordoba, from Cordoba to Tucuman, had a 



