Empresa de Ferrocarriles Ecuatorianos

The Ferrocarriles del Ecuador Empresa Publica (FE EP) (Ecuadorian Railways Company) is the national railway of Ecuador. The railway system was devised to connect the Pacific coast with the Andean highlands. After many decades of service the railway was severely damaged by heavy rainfall during the El Niño in 1997 and 1998 and from general neglect as the Pan-American Highway siphoned off passengers.

In 2008 the president Rafael Correa named the railroad a "national cultural patrimony" and indicated that it would be restored. The government of Ecuador started to rehabilitate the railway and service was restored between Guayaquil and Quito by 2013.

Tourist trains and railbuses (autoferros) are running from Quito via Cotopaxi national park to Latacunga, between Alausi to Sibambe (Devil's Nose / Nariz del Diablo), between El Tambo and Baños del Inca, between Duran and Yaguachi and between Ibarra and Salinas.

The project of an Ecuadorian railway was started by President Gabriel García Moreno in 1861. The first section was opened between Durán and Milagro in 1873, and Bucay was reached by 1888.

The push into the Andes was made under President Eloy Alfaro who planned to link Quito in the highlands to Guayaquil on the coast of Ecuador. For advice, Alfaro turned to Col. William Findlay Shunk, a well-known North American engineer who designed the New York El, and who had mapped a route of the InterContinental Railway (which was to connect North and South America) through Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama in 1892. The InterContinental Railway was never built. However, in 1897, Eloy Alfaro commissioned a contract with Archer Harman and a team of investors for the newly created New Jersey corporation, the Guayaquil and Quito Railway Company," or the G&Q, to rehabilitate and complete the railroad from Guayaquil to Quito. Archer Harman and his brother, Major John A. Harman (Col. Shunk's son-in-law) were from Staunton, Virginia. Together, Archer (G&Q financier) and John (G&Q Chief Engineer) helped Alfaro to (1) realize his dream of connecting disparate parts of Ecuador, (2) break the hold of the Catholic Church, and (3) usher the 20th Century and modernity into Ecuador.

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Wikipedia