Despite the extensive literature on the rail way in Chile, new problems related to the train and its impact on urban and socio-cultural spheres have emerged. Since the early XX-Century, the train and its infrastructure were associated with urban insecurity and road risks that announced the omnipresence of traffic accidents in a motorized society hose impacts on urban life were a cause of concern for authorities and public opinion. Based on the idea of ferrophobia, this article aims to present the ideas and discourses used from in the technical debate, policy discourses and public opinion to try to define and solve the problem; under pinning an agenda that supported policies from urban interventions on Santiago's railway infrastructure to the suppression or isolation of the tracks. Through the study of primary sources such as periodicals, technical documents, cartography and images, this article highlights some key features of the rapid sociocultural changes that the Chilean capital underwent in thefirstdecades of the XX-century.