About trenecuador.org
An independent guide to Ecuador’s Trans-Andean railway: who writes it, where every figure comes from, and what we refuse to publish.
What this site is
trenecuador.org is an independent guide to Ecuador’s railway. We are not affiliated with Ferrocarriles del Ecuador (FEEP), the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport or any municipality, and we do not speak for them. It exists because this railway is in an unusual position: the national network has been stopped since 2020 and the company that ran it is in liquidation, yet two stretches are running again and the heritage is still there. Working out what runs today, and what is history, is harder than it should be.
How the content is produced
What is running today
From the official bulletins of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, which announces each reopening with a date, a length and an operator. Two stretches: Alausí–Sibambe (the Devil's Nose) and Ibarra–Andrade Marín (the Tren Tayta Imbabura).
Devil's Nose days, times and fares
Days and departures from the ministry's bulletin of 6 June 2026; fares from dated Ecuadorian press, because the municipality that runs the train does not publish them on its own site. Every figure carries the date we checked it.
Everything else — routes, stations, Tren Crucero classes
This is historical material, and it is labelled as such on every page. It is here to explain the network and its heritage, not to plan a journey.
Station coordinates
Real ones, also embedded as GPS in the images. The stations are still standing even where no train calls.
What we deliberately leave out
On a railway that is mostly stopped it is very easy to publish things that sound right and are not true. Data a reader cannot check is worse than no data. So we leave out:
A "live" service status
There is no live source: no API, no GTFS, no operator board. Our status panel says what state each route is in according to what the operator has published, and says so in as many words. It is not a real-time incident board and we do not call it one.
Reopening dates nobody has announced
There are intentions and there are surveys — Ibarra–Salinas was inspected in January 2026 — but until the ministry announces a date, there will be no date here.
Times and prices for suspended routes, dressed up as bookable
Historical figures are marked as historical, in every table and every page.
Links to the old ticket portal
The domain Tren Ecuador used no longer belongs to it and now hosts something else. We removed it rather than send anyone there.
Corrections and contact
If something here is wrong — a fare that changed, a timetable that no longer holds, a stretch that started running again — write to [email protected]. We fix it and log the change, with the date, on Where the data comes from.
How the site is funded
The site is free to read and paid for by advertising shown alongside the content. Advertising has no influence on what we write: we do not sell sponsored articles, we take no payment to feature a route or a tour operator, and we run no affiliate schemes on tickets. If commercial content ever appears here it will be labelled as advertising.
Who is behind this site
This site is run by the team at GoRandom, a small group based in the Basque Country in Spain who do two things that go together better than they sound: travel, and build websites.
Ecuador is not yet one of the places we have been to — we are up to twenty cities and we move slowly. We would rather say so than pretend otherwise: what you read here does not come from our memories, it comes from what the Ministry of Transport publishes and from checking work we can show you.
The other half of what we know how to do is web development, and this site is the excuse to put the two together. We do not leave it sitting there: every fare and every timetable carries its source and the date we checked it, and they get revised when the operator changes something. The last thorough revision was in August 2026: the status panel was written like a live disruption board without being connected to any live source, and it even showed «partial delays» on a route that does not run. We also added the February 2026 landslide and the return of the Nariz del Diablo on 6 June.
He decides what goes up, checks the data before it does, and answers the email. If you find a fare that has expired or a timetable that no longer holds, there is a specific person to write to.
Sources
- Ecuador's Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport — official bulletins on the reopened stretches: Ibarra–Antonio Ante (April 2025), the Ibarra–Salinas survey (January 2026) and the Devil's Nose returning to service (6 June 2026).
- The Alausí municipal government, which administers, runs and maintains the Alausí–Sibambe stretch.
- Ticket Éxito, the only online channel selling Devil's Nose tickets.
- Dated Ecuadorian press (Primicias, El Universo, El Comercio) for times and fares the operator does not publish itself.
- The railway's own archive for everything historical: routes, stations and the Tren Crucero classes.