Tren de las Sierras

West of the city of Córdoba the land rises into the Sierras de Córdoba, and between two of their ranges, the Sierras Grandes and the Sierras Chicas, lies the Valle de Punilla, a long valley of resort towns, rivers and wooded hills. A railway has climbed into it for more than 130 years. The Tren de las Sierras, the train of the hills, leaves Córdoba's Mitre station, follows the Río Suquía into its gorge, runs along the shore of Lake San Roque and climbs the valley to Capilla del Monte, below the Cerro Uritorco.

It is a regional service rather than a tourist train, run by the state's Trenes Argentinos with diesel railcars, and the whole line costs 7,000 pesos. The full run takes about six hours and calls at more than twenty stations, among them Cosquín, home of Argentina's most important folk festival, La Falda and its grand hotel, and La Cumbre, which the railway named for being the highest village on the line.

The valley's passenger trains stopped in 1977 and came back in stages from 2007: through the gorge to Cosquín in 2008, and all the way to Capilla del Monte again in November 2023. Two trains a day now make the whole journey from Córdoba, and one makes it back.

The morning train leaves Córdoba's Mitre station at 06:40 on weekdays and 07:16 at weekends. For its first hour and a half it is a suburban train, calling at Hospital Neonatal, Rodríguez del Busto, La Tablada, Argüello, Tristán Narvaja and Dumesnil, until it reaches La Calera, where the plain ends and the hills begin.

Into the gorge

Beyond La Calera the line turns into the gorge of the Río Suquía, and the next stretch, 36 minutes to Casa Bamba, is the most dramatic of the journey. The track follows the river between steep, wooded walls, past the stone hall of the hamlet's old power station. The gorge opens out at Cassaffousth, on the shore of Lake San Roque, the reservoir behind a dam first built in 1890 to supply water to Córdoba and its farmland. The train follows the lake through San Roque and Bialet Massé, then Santa María, and reaches Cosquín, at 720 metres, three hours and twenty minutes after leaving Córdoba. It waits there a few minutes before going on.

Up the Punilla valley

North of Cosquín the line climbs the Valle de Punilla between the Sierras Grandes to the west and the Sierras Chicas to the east, through Molinari, Casa Grande and Valle Hermoso to La Falda, the town that grew up around the Eden Hotel. After Huerta Grande it reaches La Cumbre, at 1,141 metres the highest village on the line, some 420 metres above Cosquín. The last stop before the end is San Esteban; then the train runs into Capilla del Monte, below the bulk of the Cerro Uritorco, the highest peak of the Sierras Chicas, nearly six hours after leaving the city.

The train

The line is worked by Alerce diesel railcars, built by Emepa at Chascomús in Buenos Aires province and named after the alerce, a conifer native to Argentina. Each is two carriages with the engine between them on its own articulated bogie, and a corridor through it; most of the parts are made in Argentina. The Alerces began replacing the line's Portuguese railcars, Alstom units of 1977 bought from Comboios de Portugal, in 2015, and the last two of the twenty Emepa built were delivered in 2018 for this line and for Salta.

Trains run every day of the year, with one timetable for Monday to Friday and another for weekends; on a public holiday the train runs to the timetable of the day of the week it falls on. Two trains a day run the whole line from Córdoba and one runs the whole line back, waiting a few minutes at Cosquín on the way. The times below are the operator's, from Trenes Argentinos' timetable valid from 7 September 2026, read in October 2026, for the main stations; the trains call at every station in between. Where a station shows two times, the train arrives at the first and leaves at the second.

Córdoba to Capilla del Monte

Capilla del Monte to Córdoba

Two shorter trains complete the day. An early train leaves Cosquín for Córdoba at 04:31 on weekdays (in Córdoba 07:50) and 06:54 at weekends (10:14). An evening train leaves Capilla del Monte for Cosquín at 18:00 on weekdays (in Cosquín 20:24) and 18:36 at weekends (21:00).

Services on the line are sometimes suspended at short notice after an incident on the track.

Departures are published by the operator: Trenes Argentinos · Tren de las Sierras (opens in a new tab).

Tickets are sold on Trenes Argentinos' booking site, and can also be paid in cash to the guard on board. Fares are in Argentine pesos, one way, and depend on the distance: from 1 June 2026 they run from 700 pesos between neighbouring stations to 7,000 for the whole line from Córdoba to Capilla del Monte, and 3,500 from Córdoba to Cosquín.

Each passenger may bring one hand bag of up to 10 kg. Tents, cool boxes, large rucksacks, fishing rods and folding chairs are not allowed; bigger luggage is accepted only from passengers holding a ticket for that day's long-distance train.

No rail pass covers the Tren de las Sierras. Interrail and Eurail are European schemes, and Argentina is not among the countries in Interrail's list of covered railway companies. Every ticket is bought from Trenes Argentinos, journey by journey.

Checked October 2026 against Interrail's list of railway companies (opens in a new tab).

The Punilla valley is one of the most visited holiday regions in Argentina, and the train calls at the heart of it. The gorge and the lake are described along the route above; these are four places worth leaving the train for, in the order the train reaches them.

The whole line is a day trip from Córdoba, but the only through train back leaves Capilla del Monte at lunchtime, so an overnight stay in the valley gives a day to walk or climb before the return. One hotel at La Cumbre, the summit of the line, and one at Capilla del Monte, below the Uritorco.

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