Barrio de la Estación

Barrio de la Estación, also called La Purísima, lies east of central Aguascalientes, about a 20-minute walk from the Plaza de Armas. Unlike the city's old quarters, El Encino, Guadalupe, La Salud and San Marcos, it does not date from colonial times but from the Porfiriato: it grew in the late 19th century, when the railway arrived and changed the face of the city.

On 23 September 1897 the Mexican Central Railway Company built its General Workshops for the Construction and Repair of Engines and Rolling Stock here, on land sold by the owners of the Ojocaliente hacienda. Generations of local families worked in them. Their locomotive shop turned out La Cuarenta, the first locomotive built in Mexico, and the foreign workers who came with the company brought baseball, which soon became the sport of the city's industrial workers.

The passenger station and freight warehouse, designed by the Italian architect G. M. Buzzo, opened on 20 November 1911. Since 2003 they have housed the Railway Museum, with some 10,000 pieces: locomotives, carriages, rails and the testimony of the people who worked on the railway; inside the station, the ticket office, a sitting room and the telegraph office are recreated. Around it, the old workshops make up the Tres Centurias complex, with its plaza and fountain, the former locomotive shop now used as a convention centre, the Universidad de las Artes, a contemporary art museum, a sports club and a velodrome.

The quarter has wide streets and is bounded by Calle Decreto 27 de Septiembre to the north, Avenida Adolfo López Mateos to the south, Miguel Barragán and Ignacio T. Chávez streets to the west and Avenida Gómez Morín to the east. It also takes in the old Los Arquitos and Ojocaliente hot baths, which gave the city its name, and Calle Madero links it with the cathedral.

Mexico's federal Tourism Secretariat (SECTUR) named La Estación a Barrio Mágico in June 2024, at the Tianguis Internacional de Pueblos Mágicos held in San Antonio, Texas.