This was a British-owned Company.
Construction started in 1864 and by 1947 the track length was
5080 miles.
The first order from them
was for 27 4-4-0 5'6" gauge passenger engines delivered
in 1882/3, succeeding orders bringing the total of this their
Class 6 to 69, the initial ones were "simples" and
later ones were 2 -cylinder compounds.
This Railway came next after the New South Wales Govt. Railways
(622) and the Dutch State Railways (567) in a league table of
purchasers of the largest number of engines from Beyer Peacock
- the BAGSR's total was 416 by the time their last orders - Beyer
Garratts (12 4-8-2 + 2-8-4) and 20 4-8-0 with 3-cylinders and
3 sets of Walschaerts valve motion, one of the heaviest and most
powerful goods engines ever built for Argentina, both types delivered
in 1928.
Besides those types just mentioned,
the most commonly ordered types were 2-6-0s (116 in several designs)
and 4-6-0 (also 116 of those in several designs). There were
35 of the 2-8-0 wheel arrangement, a small number of passenger
tank engines and shunting and goods tank engines too. The most
unusual was an order for 5 "Singles", 4-2-2 delivered
in 1890 that remained in service until 1935. These had 6'6"
dia. "drivers" and were the last "Singles"
made by BP, the two supplied to the Great Northern Rly of Ireland
in 1885 were the only others made by BP in this wheel arrangement
and also the only ones of that type ever in Ireland and theirs
only lasted until 1904 when reconstructed as 4-4-Os and in that
form those lasted until 1956.
In the nationalisation of
Argentina's railway companies from 1/3/1948, the BAGSR became
part of the Ferrocarril General Roca. |