SOUTH AMERICA: Argentina’s Minister of the Interior & Transport Florencio Randazzo has described as ‘a success’ the passenger service introduced between Posadas and Encarnación in Paraguay. On January 29 he reported that the service had carried over 100 000 passengers since its introduction on December 31 2014.
The service is operated with an ex-Netherlands Railways Class 3200 two-car DMU, formerly deployed on international services between Argentina and Uruguay. It crosses the River Paraná by means of the San Roque González de Santa Cruz bridge, where freight trains had resumed operating in 2012.
Services operate every 30 min and the journey time is 10 min, ‘compared to the 4 h that it can take to cross the bridge by car or bus’, according to Randazzo. Passengers complete immigration formalities at new facilities provided at the terminus in Posadas.
