Thanks to the kindness of Jorge Luis Guevara, we have pictures of our retired trolleys arriving in Argentina on Friday, Dec. 5!

(Recap for those new to the story: we sold 80 of our retired high-floor trolleys to Mendoza, Argentina. Older stories on the trolleys’ voyage to South America can be found here, here, and here.)

Jorge works for Empresa Provincial de Transportes de Mendoza (EPTM), the transit agency who bought our trolleys. He’s promised to send more photos of the buses during their journey in the Andes, too!

So, as far as I understand from Jorge’s email and this article from an Argentinian newspaper, the buses are currently being housed in Guaymallen, a district of Mendoza, in a yard owned by EPTM. (Dale Laird passed along the link to the newspaper article—thanks Dale!)

This is the first group of our trolleys that have reached Argentina. The trucking company is using 12 trucks to move the trolleys, which means they will do seven round trips between Chile and Argentina, and all the trolleys will finally be in Mendoza by the end of January.

The trolley numbered 2919 was the first to be unloaded on Argentine soil. Jorge says it was unloaded at 4:30 pm local time.

And Jorge got to be the first to sit in the driver’s seat of the 2919!

The article from earlier indicates that the trolleys won’t be hitting the roads until the 2009 harvest is over. The trolleys will be repaired, repainted and adapted so that they can work on the trolley system in Mendoza.

By the way, Jorge maintains a blog about the trolley system in Mendoza. Interested parties are encouraged to visit!

And here is a picture of the Mendoza staff aboard our buses!

Jorge is of course second from the left, and he says that the man in the blue shirt is Osvaldo Gonzalez, one of the first trolley enthusiasts who believed that the Vancouver trolleys could make it all the way to Argentina. But he emphasizes that Mariano Cesar Antenore and Jose Luis Moscovich of the city of Rosario were the ones who found the Flyers and made the whole project happen. (I hope I’m getting this right–apologies for any miscommunications!)

And for all of you who are really curious, Jorge also sent along maps of the trolley routes that our trolleys will be travelling along. Click here to download them.

Now, since we’re already thinking of trolley systems down South America way, I will attach a few photos sent in by David, who comments on this blog every so often. These are from the city of Valparaiso, Chile, and it’s a few shots of the trolley buses there.

Thanks David! And again, if you’d like to catch up with my earlier posts on the retired trolleys heading to Mendoza, here they are:

• The retired trolleys arrive in Chile!
• The trolleys of Mendoza, Argentina
• Update on the retired trolleys sailing to South America
• Retired trolleys set sail for Argentina