A little bit about its History
In the railways’ age of splendour in the Argentine, there were all sorts of projects which were financed in their early stages by the profits made by the railways. These were then converted into companies of various types, which then sold shares to members of the public, changing them into share-holders.
Thus in 1909, one of these projects geared towards tourism and the recreation of the senior officers of the British railways and the high society of Buenos Aires, had an explosive start. It was La Compañía de Tierras y Hoteles de Sierra de la Ventana. [the Sierra de la Ventana company of lands and hotels]
Its promoters were Manuel Láinez (founder and proprietor of the El Día de La Plata newspaper, among other things), the engineer Samuel Pearson (who became chairman of the company) and Dr Félix T Muñoz.
The hotel was located some 18 kilometres west of the then Sauce Grande station of the Southern Railway [more correctly the Buenos Ayres Great Southern Railway]. Today it is Sierra de la Ventana station in the province of Buenos Aires.
Its beginnings started with the purchase of the land and the building of the Club Hotel de la Ventana. The hotel had a floor area of 6,400 m2, 173 bed-rooms, 58 bathrooms, three tennis courts, a nine-hole golf course, a firing-range, a polo ground and ornamental gardens of 126 hectares all within policies amounting to 5,000 hectares.
Following their arrival at Sierra de la Ventana station, passengers travelled in modern vehicles, of which there were three, with a seating capacity of twelve to the estate of the Club Hotel. The number of reservations grew to such a level that soon these vehicles were inadequate.
Anticipating a law which was to be enacted eight years later, Samuel E. Pearson opened negotiations with the Minister of Public Works of the Province of Buenos Aires. This would authorise the construction by the Compañía de Tierras y Hoteles de Sierra de la Ventana of an economic (2’-6” gauge) branch-line not more than 20 kilometres long (18.66 kilometres as built) which would link Sauce Grande station to a small station next to the Club Hotel.
A pair steam engines (SV1 and SV2), built by the Avonside Engine Co Ltd were brought from Fishponds, a suburb of Bristol close by the Midland Railway main line from Bristol to Derby. They were 0-6-2T (indicating that there was no carrying axle at the front, three powered axles, each with two wheels, and a single un-powered axle under the cab and there was not a separate tender).
There were two passenger coaches, each for first and second class, seating respectively 27 and 8 passengers. Additionally, there were two four-wheel vans, two four-wheel flat wagons and ten small side-tipping wagons.
Comparing this to our present day, this exclusive service became a type of air charter service exclusively contracted to cover a very short distance. It was something extravagant and very elitist.
In 2005 a group of neighbours in Sierra de la Ventana and Villa Ventana met and decided to have a walk along the embankment of this old line almost a hundred years old. The trip was one of discovery. It proved that all the rails and sleepers no longer existed, neither did the metal parts of the bridges. All that remained were the silent witnesses of the bridge abutments and the culverts in a condition which could be admired. In the original drawings for these works, the dimensions are specified to the centimetre. Now, almost a hundred years later, these dimensions are as were specified, neither more nor less when measured. The conclusion of this first walk at Villa Ventana involved a succulent barbecue. It was the motivation for a second walk, which took place in 2006. This time, it was to carry out research – and the barbecue was even better than the one in 2005!
A group of these neighbours took the initiative and formed the Asociación de Amigos de la Trochita SV. [association of friends of the SV narrow gauge railway]
Some land-owners along the route have started to use the surface of the embankments for sowing and for grazing.
On 6th January of 2007, the work of clearing and cleaning-up part of the formation was started. Here Rubén Testa deserves to be mentioned. He is the local councillor for Villa Ventana. He has put what he did not have to help us, one of the sort of people about whom we have to speak.
The abandonment by the State of such things as the train and the old Club Hotel etc has reached the point where some people have started, unthinkably, to claim, as their own, part of the park-land of the Club Hotel. Such is the ignorance of the State about these things, that a judge in Bahía Blanca granted such a claim by an inhabitant. One can imagine that the whole of the tourist district of Sierra de la Ventana got up in arms about it, as much as did the Municipality of Tornquist who have replied through their lawyers to secure an interdict against it. (go back...)
All the translations to the English language have been our friend's gracefulness in Scotland, Mr. David Sinclair