Tren Estación Central - Chillan (previously known as EFE Chillán or TerraSur) is a Chilean

Inter-city rail Inter-city rail services are Express train, express trains that run services that connect cities over longer distances than Commuter rail, commuter or Regional rail, regional trains. They include rail services that are neither short-distance co ...

service, opened in 2001 between

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile (), is the capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is located in the country's central valley and is the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Regi ...

and

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

, 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 (EFE). Covering almost 400 km in less than 5 hours, it is the fastest public transportation between the two cities. Currently it is one of the only

inter-city Inter-city rail services are Express train, express trains that run services that connect cities over longer distances than Commuter rail, commuter or Regional rail, regional trains. They include rail services that are neither short-distance co ...

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 considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

, with an operational speed reaching 160 km/h. Since June 2012, TerraSur has two daily services on each direction, between

and

, increasing to three on Mondays.

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, 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. The Electro-diesel trains are manufactured by CRRC Sifang. They consist of four cars and have 238 seats in one class. In April 2023, the government and EFE presented two of the six trains that will be incorporated into the fleet shortening the five-hour trip to three hours and 40 minutes. In January 20, 2024, Chilean authorities inaugurated the South American country's fastest train service initially connecting Santiago with Curicó in two hours and three minutes. Four months later, the service was extended to Chillán.

Rolling Stock

TerraSur uses the Spanish made EMU UTS-444 series

RENFE Renfe (, ), officially Renfe-Operadora, is Spain's national state-owned railway company. It was created in 2005 upon the split of the former Spanish National Railway Network (RENFE) into the Administrador de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias ( ...

, that hold the driver's cabin and the

pantograph A pantograph (, from their original use for copying writing) is a Linkage (mechanical), 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 se ...

, 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
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Terrasur Passenger rail transport in Chile