PRISONERS TRAIN

Ushuaia Penal Railway

On January 3, 1896, Julio A. Roca, as interim president, signed Decree No. 3335, with the intention of establishing a penal colony in the territory of Tierra del Fuego. The same prisoners built the jail.

The prison director, Engineer Catello Muratgia, asked permission to buy Decauville-type rails and other material to speed up the movement of rocks around the town and firewood from the most remote forests. Until the arrival of this material in 1908, wooden rails were used and it was called Xilocarril (Wooden Railroad) and oxen to drag the wagons. (Memory of the Ministry of Justice of 1903, page 610, mentions the construction of the xilocarril.) Since 1908 the railway, already with the Decauville-type rails, developed rapidly, the network extended on the slopes of Cerro Susana, inside the valley of the Río Pipo and reached the Cañadón del Toro, today a National Park, and the number of machines and wagons increased in number.

Characteristics: 600 mm gauge Owner: Ministry of Justice, Penitentiary Service
Function: Transport of wood and stones and loading and unloading of merchandise from the dock to the Presidio
Locomotives: It depends on the time, it had an Orenstein & Koppel, and a Jüng. The O&K probably from 1910 and the Jüng from 1928. Probably had more locomotives. Towed stock: Wagons probably Orenstein & Koppel and a car likely made in the Presidio with wagon bogies.

 With the convicts, the southernmost train in the world was enabled in 1913. It reached an extension of 25 kilometers and ran alongside Maipú street, passing through the Monte Susana camp and dividing into two branches towards what is today the National Park ..

Alfonso Lavado, born in Ushuaia in 1922 and his wife Luz Marina Jerez, also from Ushuaia, tells us: “The prison guards entered at 6 in the morning because at 7 they left by train. In winter they went out the same: first the session (group of convicts) walking forward with shovels. They were 50 or 60 cleaning and behind the little train, slowly, that's how they did 10 kilometers, shoveling the snow until they reached Mount Susana and when they reached kilometer 5 or 8 there are some ravines in which they made tunnels in the snow.

The first train was a small machine, which lasted about 25 years, then there was a bigger one with a slightly wider gauge, with this one could bring more cargo. The prisoner used to prepare firewood in winter and summer, and some commissions went out to the town to collaborate with the Development Commission (Municipality). Always the one with good behavior, the one with bad behavior remained inside, internal. They were dedicated to cleaning, painting, they had the jail as a mirror, you could eat on the floor. "