Historic Routes of Ecuador's Railroad: Alfaro's Train and Many Other Paths

Some time ago, curiosity led me to retrace old routes, guided by maps and tales from weathered books. That's how I found that lost Eiffel bridge and other fascinating things I'll publish someday. I discovered many abandoned places, yet incredibly beautiful and steeped in history. The idea took hold to digitize these routes with GPS coordinates—mainly as a tool to help myself find them again, someday. Many of these routes no longer exist.

While taking readings and verifying waypoints (yes, traveling there physically even), I shared my progress with my good friend and Ecuadorian railway enthusiast, Ed Crowe. To the sadness of all of us passionate about our train's history, we suffered the irreparable loss of Ed just days ago, so I wanted to publish this work in his honor.

Ecuador's Railroad Through History

I'll begin gradually adding all the routes I've digitized to an interactive map, where you can zoom in and see detail. They're not yet precise at every point, but accurate enough to start this project of mapping them and, who knows, perhaps someday traveling them as a tourist attraction or to better understand the great feat that building Ecuador's railroad represented.

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The railway epic left traces across the country: look for the lost Eiffel bridge in Ecuador and see century-old rails in this window to Ecuador a century ago.