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Lying just 40 kilometres west of Buenos Aires
one of Latin Americas most vibrant capitals
the town of "20 de Junio"
is like a scene from another place, another time.
Once a bustling commuter town
built either side of the General Belgrano railroad
today the town of just over 500 residents
is home to desolate streets, abandoned buildings and a forlorn community.
I moved from Buenos Aires to here 20 de Junio
in the period that the train was running perfectly.
As we were children we put the ropes on the drums for the milk train.
In the latter years of the 20th century
when the Argentine Government sold off most of its railway holdings
Veinte De Junio was one of many abandoned communities
that near withered along with the railways that braced them.
The disappearance of the train left a dirt-track
as Veinte De Junio's sole link to the outside world.
Five years ago when washed out by rain
a local farmer got the idea of using a makeshift handcar
on the redundant tracks.
Some former train workers picked up on the plan
and the Friends of the Belgrano Railway was born.
Today Carlos and over 50 other volunteers
have restored over 150 kilometres of broken down rusty railway.
We are maintaining and preserving all that we can,
painting stations, we have put one new kilometre of track;
this is due to the fact that there were robberies after the abandonment.
80 years ago when Argentina was one of the top ten economies in the world
its rail network was one of the world's largest
but through the policies of successive Governments 31 00:01:57,967 --> 00:01:59,539 the infrastructe diminished.
At the start of the 1990s
with the railroads losing close to US$1 billion per year
the administration of then president Carlos Menem
sold off the majority of train lines.
The railway was what colonized all the country.
Now to travel from here to Buenos Aires is a torture
I don't know in whose head it occured to remove this
without having made routes sufficiently to be able to replace it.
This depopulated the country completely.
The closure of over 10,000 kilometres of branch lines
resulted in a process of migration to the cities,
leaving overgrown tracks buried under the earth
and banked by cracked walls.
It's an image that repeats itself
in about 360 towns in the province of Buenos Aires
and an estimated 600 towns throughout Argentina
are in risk of total abandon.
Juan Wahren is a researcher from the sociology department
at the University of Buenos Aires.
He recently headed up a study on the effects of the trains disappearance.
"A train that stops due to a strike, is a branch line that will be closed",
That was the saying at the time and in fact it was like that;
every place where there were protests or which was not economically viable
was closed, and the branch line abandoned.
This generated a process in the smallest towns in the provinces
a very strong process of economic and social crisis.
There were some towns that had a cultural identity very close to,
very linked to the railway.
Really they are almost abandoned leaving just maybe 6 or 7 families
a heap of abandoned houses, the station demolished.
These towns are almost ghost towns that are in the process of disappearance.
The Friends have now been given the government's permission
to work on the deserted track which is still owned by the state.
They're also hoping their efforts can build steam
behind similar movements throughout the country.
We don't lose hope that it will begin to be reactivated.
The fact is that this is the only government
since a very long time back
that has employed and set aside a lot of money for the railways.
With their conviction that the train service
provides an important social link to towns throughout the country
The Friends of the Belgrano Railway
are sure they're on the right track.
The train has to come back
because its the best medium of transport that there is;
more economical, less contaminating
and today the roads are jammed with trucks, cars
and, well, this didn't happen before.
Hoping to regain the splendour of times gone by
the Friends of Belgrano are just one example 82 00:04:48,327 --> 00:04:50,985 of the type of local efforts by small communities
that have come together to not be wiped out.
We know people from Plomar that are also doing the same.
In Mercedes there is another group, in Espora, in Gouin,
and we are all waiting for this to happen; that the trains return.