Scenic route
Tren a las Nubes
Salta → San Antonio de los Cobres · Argentina
Tren a las Nubes in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 217 km
- Fastest time
- ≈ 7 h
- Average speed
- 31 km/h
- Top speed
- 35 km/h
- Operator
- Tren a las Nubes
- Train
- Tourist consist
- Countries
- Argentina
- In service since
- 1948
- Runs
- weekly (Saturdays), more in high season
- Highest point
- 4,220 m
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
“Train to the Clouds”: zigzags and spirals up the Andes to the La Polvorilla viaduct at 4,220 m.
Engineer Richard Fontaine Maury built the line without rack or cable, trusting adhesion and patient geometry to lift trains roughly 3,000 m above the Lerma valley. Completed in 1948 as part of a trans-Andean route towards Chile, its most dramatic stretch has run as a tourist service since the early 1970s, with medics patrolling the aisles offering coca tea and oxygen. Journey’s end is San Antonio de los Cobres, a wind-scoured mining town at 3,775 m on the puna.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 6445519 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 44 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 10 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: Tren a las Nubes — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Quebrada del Toro gorge
- El Alisal and Chorrillos zigzags
- Puna high desert
- San Antonio de los Cobres at 3,775 m
- La Polvorilla viaduct — 4,220 m
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