Urquiza Line (Buenos Aires) - History

History

The brothers Federico and Teófilo Lacroze were pioneers opening several horse-drawn tramway lines in Buenos Aires city, first in 1868 from Plaza de Mayo to Plaza Once and in 1870 the "Tramway Central of Lacroze".

On 2 October 1884, they were granted a concession to build a 47 kilometres (29 mi) railway also pulled by horses from Buenos Aires through open country southwest to Pilar. On 6 April 1888, the line was opened with the name of "Tramway Rural", (rural tramway) to Pilar with a branch to San Martín thereafter.

Three years later, in 1891, it was converted to steam and as the capital expanded, business to the suburbs was so good that a new branch to Campo de Mayo was inaugurated in 1904 using electric power supply, and the whole section between Federico Lacroze and San Martín was electrified in 1908. Electricity came from the Lacroze tramways of Buenos Aires and overhead wires delivered 600 volt DC current to a fleet of wooden US-style interurban coaches from Brill.

In 1897 the line was renamed Ferrocarril Rural de la Provincia de Buenos Aires and in 1906 it was renamed again to Ferrocarril Central de Buenos Aires. However, since it was still operated by its owners, it continued to be known unofficially as the "Federico Lacroze Rural Tramway".

The original cars were still running by the end of the 1940s and had become too unsafe to permit continued private operation, and the line was nationalised by the Peronist government in 1948 and became part of Ferrocarril General Urquiza, one of the several divisions of the state-owned Ferrocarriles Argentinos.

By 1951 it was completely rebuilt, new substations were set up, new modern cantilever roofed stations of reinforced concrete were built and 28 used 1700 series interurban coaches, manufactured by Pacific Electric Railway between 1925 and 1928, were bought. These were used until the early 1970s when they were replaced by 128 new Japanese subway coaches, third rail current collectors were installed and the station platforms were raised at the same time to match the new coaches.

One interesting fact is that in 1959, Ferrocarril General Urquiza acquired 30 PCC coaches, built by the St. Louis Car Company in 1940. These were modified at the ends to operate in two, three or four-sectioned articulated formations like most modern LRVs. They were all retired by the mid-1960s, because they were too lightly built to handle the heavy passenger loads.