Argentina's train network , developed with British investment from the late nineteenth century and nationalized by the Perón administration in 1948, collapsed in 1993 with the withdrawal of government subsidies. Certain long-distance services were maintained by provincial governments, such as the one that links isolated rural communities between Viedma and Bariloche in Río Negro Province, but these tend to be slower and less reliable than buses. The city of Buenos Aires has a large and remarkably inexpensive network of trains that run to the suburbs, into its namesake province, and to the town of Santa Rosa in La Pampa Province.

You're far less likely to want to use Argentinian trains as a method of getting from "A" to "B", however, than you are to try one of country's famous tourist trains , where the aim is simply to travel for the sheer fun of it. There are two principal tars: La Trochita , the Old Patagonian Express from Esquel; and the Tren a los Nubes , one of the highest railways in the world, which climbs through the mountains from Salta towards the Chilean border. A tinpot toy train runs from near Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego into the nearby national park, but it has little in the way of an authentic feel and as a journey for its own sake is overhyped.