The Buenos Aires Western Railway (BAWR), inaugurated in the city of Buenos Aires on 29 August 1857, was the first railway built in Argentina and the start of the extensive rail network which was developed over the following years. The locomotive La Porteña, built by the British firm EB Wilson & Company in Leeds, was the first train to travel on this line.

The Argentine railway network consisted of a 47,000 km (29,204 mi) network at the end of the Second World War and was, in its time, one of the most extensive and prosperous in the world. However, with the increase in highway construction, there followed a sharp decline in railway profitability, leading to the break-up in 1993 of Ferrocarriles Argentinos (FA), the state railroad corporation. During the period following privatisation, private and provincial railway companies were created and resurrected some of the major passenger routes that FA once operated.