New commuter rail lines in El Salvador and Costa Rica

FENEDESAL of El Salvador is moving forward with their plans to rebuild the nations entire rail infrastructure, and then some. One of the first stages was to bring back passenger service between San Salvador(nations capital) and Apopa, a suburb.

In Costa Rica, a new commuter line(I'm assuming a new one aside from the original one) is now operating between San Jose and a suburb. There are a bunch of videos online.

islandtransit wrote:FENEDESAL of El Salvador is moving forward with their plans to rebuild the nations entire rail infrastructure, and then some. One of the first stages was to bring back passenger service between San Salvador(nations capital) and Apopa, a suburb.

In Costa Rica, a new commuter line(I'm assuming a new one aside from the original one) is now operating between San Jose and a suburb. There are a bunch of videos online.

In Costa Rica Paul Theroux described two lines, one to the Atlantic; the other to the Pacific. I think both were Cape gauge. The Pacific one was electrified. I gather both have closed, which seems a pity.

ir ode both in the eighties , george . It would be surprising to me if theyre both closed , but have heard the same .

David Benton wrote:ir ode both in the eighties , george . It would be surprising to me if theyre both closed , but have heard the same .

I believe I read that the Pacific line had lost its overhead, perhaps by theft. Of course what is really needed in the area is a longitudinal standard gauge line from Mexico to Colombia, but we have discussed this before.

Theroux rode a train in El Salvador. He found the state of the trains extremely bad, like the state of the whole country. Since then there has been an intensified civil war, and there are still troubles from a more or less fascist regime. I assume the existing rail system closed down. It was two foot gauge.

The civil war is long over in El Salvador. The rail network is slowly getting back up on its feet. The San Salvador-Apopa line is up and running. As for Costa Rica, they've got at least one line running for commuter service, and supposedly, plenty of freight service.