Background . train ferry (c.1920). The first segment of what is today the Urquiza railway was a 10 km segment between
Gualeguay and Puerto Ruiz in Entre Ríos, which opened in 1866 as part of the Argentine
Central Entre Ríos Railway company. In 1887 the line which runs from
Paraná, Entre Ríos to
Concepción del Uruguay was completed, with branches running to
Villaguay,
Gualeguaychú and
Victoria. The Central Entre Ríos Railway was then taken over by the
British Entre Ríos Railway in 1892. In 1873 the British-owned
East Argentine Railway opened a line between
Concordia and
Mercedes, extending these services northwards outside Entre Ríos to
Corrientes for the first time. In November 1886,
Congress approved the line's expansion to
Misiones province, taking it from
Monte Caseros in Corrientes to
Posadas. In 1898 the company's owner John E. Clark transferred his concession to the
Argentine North Eastern Railway, which opened the Monte Caseros - Posadas line in 1890. At the same time, the
Buenos Aires Central Railway company, headed by the Argentine businessman
Federico Lacroze, opened a standard gauge railway line between
Buenos Aires and
Pilar in
Buenos Aires Province in 1888, with an extension to
Zárate that same year. In 1906 the line was extended to Entre Ríos and a traffic-sharing agreement signed between the Argentine and British rail companies, effectively joining the provinces of Corrientes and Misiones to Buenos Aires by rail for the first time. For some years the
Paraná River was crossed using a
train ferry, however bridges and viaducts were later built. By 1913, train ferries crossing the northern part of the Paraná River between Posadas and
Encarnación began operating, thus linking the Argentine railway to the
Paraguayan railway and to the country's capital city of
Asunción.
Nationalisation In 1948, following the
nationalisation of the railways in Argentina, all these standard gauge lines were grouped together under the Ferrocarril General Urquiza (General Urquiza Railway) name and would later become one of the six divisions of
Ferrocarriles Argentinos. The following
standard gauge railway companies were added to Urquiza Railway network after the 1948 nationalisation:
Notes: • (1)
The Entre Ríos Railway had acquired the Central Entre Ríos Railway in 1892. • (2)
The Argentine North Eastern had acquired the East Argentine in 1907. In 1991 the railway was privatised as part of Carlos Menem's
neoliberal reforms, though the railway, along with all the
railways of Argentina, are in the process of being re-nationalised as of 2015. ==Suburban branch==