The importance of these currents of internal traffic has made itself felt in the organization of the Argentine system. It has made it necessary for each system to have not only an outlet to an exporting town, but a direct connection with the chief centre of home consumption, Buenos Aires. The narrow-gauge system, which until the end of the nineteenth century had been restricted to the northern half of Argentine territory, north of the latitude of Rosario, developed in the province of Buenos Aires after 1900, and ventured to compete in the carriage of cereals with the broad-gauge system (Company of the Province of Buenos Aires and Provincial railway of La Plata). This system connected with the narrow-gauge lines of the north. The Central Cordoba, which had reached Rosario in 1912 and so had escaped the need to transfer its export-traffic at Cordoba to the broad-gauge, began immediately afterwards to effect a direct communication with Buenos Aires (Central Cordoba, extension to Buenos Aires, opened in 1913). The line from Rosario to Buenos Aires of the Province of Buenos Aires Company also serves to carry trains of the Province of Santa Fe Company, which is closely associated with it. The medium-gauge lines of Mesopotamia also have effected a communication with Buenos Aires by means of a ferry-boat that plies on the Parana between Ibicuy and Zarate, and by using a section of the Buenos Aires Central. The concentration of narrow-gauge and medium-gauge lines seemed to be issuing in a complete fusion of their interests in 1913. The Argentine Railway Company got control of the lines of Entre Rios, Corrientes and the Paraguay. It promoted the development and extension of the Central Cordoba, and it also had large interests in the French companies of the Buenos Aires and Santa Fe provinces. All the narrow-gauge lines would have concentrated in its hands if it had been able to get the State railway. The broad-gauge line from Rosario to Puerto Belgrano had, as its interest conflicted with those of the great broad-gauge English systems, joined the narrow-gauge group engineered by the Argentine railway. But the amalgamation attempted by the Argentine railways did not succeed, and, after its failure, the companies it had temporarily brought together resumed their independence. The river-route of the Parana has sometimes been an auxiliary, at other times a rival, of the railways. Until the line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was opened in 1886, the navigation of the Parana was the only link between the system of northern Argentina and that of the Buenos Aires province. Before the line was completed, the company had established a service of boats on the Parana, and in this way it kept up a traffic in goods consigned to stations on the Central Argentine, to be transferred at Rosario. These combinations of railway and river service disappeared when the line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was finished.