No, the viral video of the train traveling on a mountain was not filmed in Argentina but in the United States.

Broadcast by social networks, with a video of a train carrying several wagons that pbad through a mountain, claiming that it is an Argentine railway "that goes down from Salta to & # 39; At the Port of Santa Fe ". However, Reverso he was able to verify that this is false: although the text of the viral content refers to a feat of the national government, the video that accompanies it it was not filmed in Argentina but in California, in the USA.

Audiovisual content was shared by at least 13 users of Facebookwhose publications had more than 8,000 shared and more than 162,000 reproductions together – according to a survey conducted by this means -. Misinformation also disseminated by Twitter, where it has been retweeted nearly 4,000 times (see here and here).

The real story behind the images

After performing a reverse image search to know the origin of the video, Reverso he could check that the train that can be observed circulates, indeed, across California, United States, and not between the provinces of Salta and Santa Fe, as the viral messages say.

Railway construction shown in the images, in which the railway crosses a tunnel and then surrounds a hill, is known as the "Tehachapi loop" and belongs to part of the Union Pacific network. Railway.

This stretch of trails in California was built between 1874 and 1876 and is still used. In the square is a plaque with the history of the loop of Tehachapi in which it is read that the construction is "one of the seven wonders of the world of railways" and that it was considered a point of historical landmark of American Civil Engineering by the Society American Civil Engineers.

Some of the publications have been shared with the following text: "It's the train that goes down from Salta to Santa Fe harbor, after many years, equivalent to 150 trucks, it takes 3 days, it carries 100 cars, it is He called the beast and hauled 6,000 tons of grain, before it had only 30 cars and it took 10 days, and Minister Dietrich made all the progress. "This is related to a fact, although the viral images do not match.

According to the Ministry of Transportation of the Nation in a statement, the Belgrano Cargas train made a test trip last May and transported 100 loaded cars from Joaquín V. González, in Salta, Timbúes, Santa Fe.

The train arrived in 3 days and traveled 1,180 kilometers along the grain branch that runs through these provinces, according to information provided by the portfolio led by Minister Guillermo Dietrich. Last October, two more tests of this type were carried out and it is expected that, from next September, these trains will be able to carry 6,000 net tons, against 3,800 currently, according to the official announcement.

This is not the first time the video of the Tehachapi loop is mistakenly linked to a train from another part of the world. There are publications that place it in China and Germany, and others that say it was shot in India.

(*) This note was produced as part of Reverso, the collaborative initiative against misinformation during the 2019 election campaign.