Santiago to Chillán

Two very different trains share this timetable. Most departures are worked by one of six bimodal trains built in China by CRRC Sifang, which entered service in January 2024 and can run at 160 km/h under the wires or on diesel when the power fails. Once a day each way the train is instead one of the UTS 444 units: electric trains built for Spain's state railway at the start of the 1980s, sold to Chile, and still carrying passengers south from Santiago more than forty years later.

Either way the journey is the same: 398 kilometres down Chile's Central Valley from Estación Central in Santiago to Chillán, the capital of Ñuble, through four regions, twelve stations and four and a half hours of fields, vineyards and river crossings, with the Andes along the eastern horizon the whole way. It runs every day of the year, with seats sold online and at the station windows.

Trains leave from Estación Central, on the Alameda in Santiago, under the iron roof that Schneider & Cie of Le Creusot shipped from France in 1897. The line south is the oldest in this part of Chile: the first section, to San Bernardo, opened in September 1857, and the rails reached Rancagua at Christmas 1859, Curicó at Christmas 1868 and Chillán in 1874.

Two trains

The BMU — EFE's series SFB-500 — is the train most departures use: four cars, 236 seats, automatic doors level with the platform, a café car with bean-to-cup coffee machines, sockets at every seat and room for four wheelchairs. It is bimodal, running from the overhead wires and switching automatically to diesel if the supply fails. EFE ordered six of them for this service alone, and the line is being rebuilt around them: new platforms at San Javier, Linares and Chillán in May 2026, a new station at Curicó in August, and a maintenance centre at Chillán due by the end of the year.

The UTS 444 works the midday train in each direction. The units were built in 1980–81 for Renfe's long-distance services in Spain and ten of them were sold to Chile, where they started the TerraSur service to Chillán in December 2001. They have 181 seats, steps up from the platform, and a café counter. The UTS train is also the one that calls at every station: the BMU services skip Molina and San Javier.

Down the valley

South of San Bernardo the line crosses the Maipo on a long steel truss bridge and runs through the farmland of O'Higgins to Rancagua, the first big stop, and on to San Fernando and Curicó. From there it is the Maule region — six of the twelve stations are in it — with Talca at its centre and the crossing of the Maule river just beyond. After Linares and Parral the snow cone of the Nevado de Longaví stands out on the Andean skyline to the east, and the last stop before the terminus is San Carlos. Chillán, rebuilt after the earthquake of 1939 destroyed it, is the end of the line.

EFE currently warns that journeys are taking longer than usual while it adjusts its operations, so the times below are worth checking again on the day.

Four trains a day run each way, every day of the year, and on some dates the checkout sells an extra. The times below are from EFE's own journey planner and the train types from its ticket checkout, read in September 2026 for weekdays and Sundays in October.

Santiago (Estación Central) to Chillán

Chillán to Santiago (Estación Central)

Every stop on the 07:40

The midday UTS calls at every station, adding Molina and San Javier: out of Santiago at 12:20, it reaches Curicó at 14:35, Talca at 15:19 and Chillán at 17:08.

Extra departures appear in the checkout only: on Friday 9 October it also sold a 14:45 BMU, due in Chillán at 19:24, which was not there the following Friday. The operator's service page carries an older table (a 12:05 from Chillán, an 08:35 from Chillán on Sundays); the planner and the checkout agree with each other, and the times above are theirs.

Departures are published by the operator: EFE · Tren Chillán – Estación Central (opens in a new tab).

Tickets are sold by EFE Central, online at pasajes.efe.cl or at the station windows (Estación Central's open 06:30 to 22:00), with a numbered seat you can choose when you book. Fares are priced by date and by train, not from a fixed table: the same Santiago–Chillán seat cost CLP 12,000 on a Tuesday in October and CLP 17,000 to 22,500 on Fridays, so travelling midweek pays.

Each train type has its own classes, set out in the two cards below. The checkout also has passenger types for children under 14, babies under three and seniors, and every intermediate station can be booked on its own, from Santiago to Rancagua or from Talca to Chillán.

No rail pass covers this journey. Chile sits outside the Interrail and Eurail schemes, and EFE Central sells every seat as a single ticket for a named train and date, priced by demand, so there is no flat fare a pass could replace.

The ticket also stands alone within Chile. It does not include the Talca–Constitución branch, which starts from the same station at Talca and is paid for at the window there, and it does not cover the suburban trains that share the line out of Santiago as far as Rancagua.

South of Santiago the stops are working provincial towns rather than sights in themselves, and each of the four below is the capital of its province or region, with its main church on the square. Any of them can be a stop-over: tickets are sold between any two stations, and with four trains a day each way there is always a later one to carry on south.

The first train south reaches Chillán at lunchtime and the last one gets in after nine at night, so a night in Chillán is the natural way to split a return trip. Both hotels below are in the city centre, near the Plaza de Armas and the cathedral, a short taxi ride from the station.

At the Santiago end, Estación Central has its own station on Line 1 of the Metro, so any hotel near that line puts the first train of the morning within easy reach.