TerraSur (previously known as EFE Chillán) is a Chilean

Inter-city rail Inter-city rail services are express passenger train services that run services that connect cities over longer distances than commuter or regional trains. There is no precise definition of inter-city rail; its meaning may vary from country ...

service, opened in 2001 between

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whos ...

and

Chillán Chillán () is the capital List of cities in Chile, city of the Ñuble Region in the Diguillín Province of Chile located about south of the country's capital, Santiago, near the geographical center of the country. It is the capital of the new � ...

, on the ''Chilean Central Valley''. It is operated by the ''Trenes Regionales Terra S.A.'', a subsidiary of the

Empresa de los Ferrocarriles del Estado Empresa de los Ferrocarriles del Estado (abbreviated EFE, lit. ''State Railway Company'') is the national railway and the oldest state-run enterprise in Chile. It manages the infrastructure and operating rail services in the country. Track gauge ...

(EFE). Covering almost 400 km in less than 5 hours, it is the fastest public transportation between those cities. Currently it is one of the only inter-city services that still operates in the country, (the other intercity rail service is the Alameda-Temuco train, a seasonal train) and is the fastest rail service in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

, with an operational speed reaching 150 km/h. Since June 2012, TerraSur has two daily services on each direction, between

and

, increasing to three on Mondays.

Planned upgrade

In 2019, EFE announced its intention to launch a tender for the supply of six new rolling stock units capable of maximum speeds of 160 km/h. These new vehicles, along with the automation and upgrade of 74 level crossings will allow a journey time of 2 hours 40 minutes for express services between Santiago and Chillán, with intermediate stops at San Bernardo, Rancagua and Talca, and will allow the service to meet the international definition of

Higher-speed rail Higher-speed rail (HrSR), also known as high-performance rail, higher-performance rail, semi-high-speed rail or almost-high-speed rail, is the jargon used to describe inter-city passenger rail services that have top speeds of more than convent ...

, making it the first in South America. Along with a standard service consisting of ten intermediate stops, EFE plans to operate 12 daily round trips.

Rolling Stock

TerraSur uses the Spanish made EMU UTS-444 series RENFE, that hold the driver's cabin and the

pantograph A pantograph (, from their original use for copying writing) is a mechanical linkage connected in a manner based on parallelograms so that the movement of one pen, in tracing an image, produces identical movements in a second pen. If a line dr ...

, with one RENFE 10000 Series passenger coach in the middle of each convoy.

Accommodations

The trains consist of 2 types of accommodations; *Coach Class (standard class) (reserved seating): Car with 74 passenger capacity, sliding seats, arranged in rows (2+2), with a central aisle, facing each other at the centre, in a way that 50% of the seats are arranged to be facing to the rear of the train. *Business Class (first class) (reserved seating): Car with 35 passenger capacity, reclining booths to 140°, arranged in rows (2+1), with an aisle at the centre and facing each other, 50% of the seats are facing the front of the train and the other 50% are facing the rear of the train.

Stations

References

External links

Empresa de los Ferrocarriles del Estado
* Passenger rail transport in Chile {{chile-transport-stub