Ferrocarril Andino

The Ferrocarril Andino (FCA) was a state-owned company in Argentina which, towards the end of the 19th century, built and operated a railway connecting Villa María in Córdoba Province with the cities of Mendoza and San Juan. The 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 ³⁄₈ in)  network was later sold to a number of British-owned railway companies.

The FCA was the first state-owned railway in Argentina and was founded on 15 November 1867 with the aim of linking the three provinces of the Cuyo region, San Juan, San Luis and Mendoza with the city of Rosario, via the Central Argentine Railway connection at Villa María, established in 1867. Details of the building of the line are given in Table 1.

In 1886 the FCA bought the branch line from Villa Mercedes to La Toma from the ex-Ferrocarril Noroeste a La Rioja and extended it to Villa Dolores to give a branch line with a total length of 226 km.

The construction costs and tariffs of the FCA were the lowest of any railway company in Argentina at that time, and when it began to make a profit, the network was sold off to British-owned companies as detailed in Table 2.

References

• Colin M. Lewis, British Railways in Argentina 1857-1914: A Case Study of Foreign Investment, Athlone Press (for the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London), 1983.