BnamericasPublished: Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Rolling stock Copper Copper cathodes Freight railway Rail line
Argentina is seeking to revive several railway projects to improve freight transport within and beyond its borders, in a country where trains move less than 5% of the total cargo transported.
According to a recent assessment by the transport and logistics department of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA), the country moved close to 20 million tonnes of freight by rail in 2025, with more than 70% of the volume concentrated in grains and aggregates. Argentina has 15,769km of tracks, but only 350 operational locomotives.
BNamericas reviews the projects in the pipeline and those in the process of reactivation.
Belgrano Freight
It is the flagship railway privatization project of Javier Milei's government, with bidding documents expected before the end of the year and projected investments of at least US$800 million (mn).
Belgrano Cargas, which operates the Belgrano, San Martín and Urquiza freight lines, is a key company for Argentine logistics, especially in the transport of minerals.
Its 7,600 km network connects the northwestern and northeastern regions of Argentina, crosses 16 provinces, links five international border crossings —Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, and Uruguay— and reaches the country’s main export ports, including Rosario and Buenos Aires.
The government will tender separately the tracks, the locomotives, the wagons, and the workshops.
This week, a specific trust was created to channel the funds from the rolling stock auction towards works.
According to the local press, work is underway so that the necessary works for Belgrano Cargas can be included in the incentive regime for large investments (RIGI).
Within this framework, the San Martín branch foresees a change from narrow gauge to broad gauge on the Albardón-Jáchal section, in San Juan, to connect it directly with the provincial mining area. According to what the president of Belgrano Cargas, Alejandro Núñez, confirmed to the local press, this extension would make it possible to increase the volume transported by that line from 4.5 to 6.5 million tonnes per year.
Train to Vaca Muerta
The Norpatagónico train is a corridor to connect the agro-industrial and petrochemical port of Bahía Blanca, in the province of Buenos Aires, with Añelo, the heart of Vaca Muerta’s oil development, in Neuquén, crossing the province of Río Negro.
Although the project is currently suspended, this year it became known that the national government is analyzing its possible reactivation.
The planned intervention covers a total of 665 kilometers, of which about 580 kilometers correspond to improvements to existing roads.
International connections
After being halted for almost a decade, the Paso de los Libres–Uruguaiana border railway, on the border between Argentina and Brazil, is on the way to reactivation.
As part of a project to restore infrastructure on the Urquiza line, a US$44.4mn project was launched that aims to reactivate 210km of tracks in Entre Ríos, Corrientes and Misiones to move grains, cement and pulp to Brazil.
Of the total investment, US$29.8mn were provided by the Fondo para la Convergencia Estructural del Mercosur (Focem) and the rest by the Argentine state.
The UIA identifies this corridor, along with the Salvador Mazza–Yacuiba crossing to Bolivia, also inactive, as a priority for the competitiveness of regional foreign trade.
In the north of the country, the reactivation of the C14 and C15 branches of Belgrano Cargas, which connect Salta with the Socompa/Sico border crossing to Antofagasta, Chile, also remains on the agenda. It is one of the five international crossings in the network and gains additional importance due to its potential for lithium exports from northern Argentina, although for now it does not have a defined construction schedule.
Meanwhile, the plan to reactivate the bi-oceanic railway connection between Mendoza and the Valparaíso Region would, for now, not become a reality. The Longotoma Corridor, which proposed a 54km tunnel under the mountain range with an investment of US$9.6 billion (bn), would be on track to be discarded by the Logistics Development Program of the Chilean transport ministry, which is evaluating the project and maintains that there is no demand to justify it, according to local press reports this week. For the moment, this is a technical evaluation by the agency and not a formal rejection.
Meanwhile, in the Cuyo region, a project of at least US$4bn is being evaluated for a rail crossing to Chile via El Planchón-Vergara in the department of Malargüe which, together with the reactivation of the Cuyo lines that connect San Juan and Mendoza, would provide a logistics route for the mining needs of the provinces.
San Juan today is home to the most advanced projects of the next Argentine mining wave —Los Azules, El Pachón and Vicuña District—, all of them needing to move large volumes of inputs and, later on, ore.
(The original version of this content was written in Spanish)
