Qualla: Empresa de Ferrocarriles Ecuatorianos

Empresa de Ferrocarriles Ecuatorianos: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ekem, CC BY-SA 3.0. A train was once supposed to connect two countries that no longer exist as they did then. In 1892, an American engineer named Colonel William Findlay Shunk - the same man who designed the New York Elevated - drafted a route for the InterContinental Railway, a chain of rails meant to run from the United States through Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, all the way to Argentina. That railway never got built. But Shunk's work was not wasted. Five years later, his son-in-law's brother signed a contract with President Eloy Alfaro to rehabilitate a crumbling Ecuadorian line and carry it over the Andes. The train that emerged would climb from sea level to 11,800 feet, shunt back and forth across a cliff called the Devil's Nose, and become one of South America's most audacious engineering acts.

Image: Ekem | CC BY-SA 3.0

Empresa de Ferrocarriles Ecuatorianos: The Dream of Two Ecuadors Joined

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ekem, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ecuador in the nineteenth century was functionally two countries. There was the humid coast around Guayaquil, Pacific-facing and mercantile, and there was the Andean sierra around Quito, highland and Catholic and conservative. A journey between them by mule took days. President G...

Image: Ekem | CC BY-SA 3.0

Empresa de Ferrocarriles Ecuatorianos: The Devil's Nose

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roy & Danielle, CC BY 2.0. Between the towns of Alausi and Sibambe, the Andes show their teeth. To gain roughly 500 meters of altitude in a near-vertical span of only about twelve kilometers, the engineers carved a pair of switchbacks up the rock face they named Nariz del Diablo - the Devil's Nose. Trains ...

Image: Roy & Danielle | CC BY 2.0

Empresa de Ferrocarriles Ecuatorianos: Side Branches and Cut Lines

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jan Pesula (Sapfan), Public domain. The Andean spine was only part of the system. Smaller railways crept across Manabi Province and the coastal plain: Bahia de Caraquez to Chone opened in 1912, ran for fifty years, then vanished by the mid-1960s. A line from Manta to Santa Ana served from 1913 to 1946. The Guayaqui...

Image: Jan Pesula (Sapfan) | Public domain

Empresa de Ferrocarriles Ecuatorianos: The Slow Abandonment

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jan Pesula (Sapfan), Public domain. El Nino came in 1997 and 1998, and the rains took out bridges, embankments, and long stretches of track. By the 2008 centennial only about 10 percent of the railway was operational. The Pan-American Highway had done most of the rest of the damage, siphoning passengers and freight...

Image: Jan Pesula (Sapfan) | Public domain

Empresa de Ferrocarriles Ecuatorianos: Ruins and Revivals

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ekem, CC BY-SA 3.0. COVID-19 shut everything. All trains stopped running on March 17, 2020. By May 19, Executive Decree No. 1057 had ordered the extinction of Ferrocarriles del Ecuador Empresa Publica, beginning a liquidation that continued through at least 2021. The national railway, 147 years afte...

Image: Ekem | CC BY-SA 3.0