The old train lines

This short piece of train track is all that remains of this wonderful scenic railway. 

One of the biggest problems to access Sierra Nevada at the beginning of the 20th century was communications. Already at the beginning of 1906, the General Director of the Granada tramway company, Nicolás Escoriaza, entrusted the construction project of a railway to the Sierra to the engineer Strub, who presented it in Granada in the last days of August 1906.  The original plan for the railway was very optimistic.  The projected length of the track was 35 kilometers, starting from Granada and ending at the peak of Mulhacén. It would be ordinary rails for the first 28km and from there until kilometer 33 there would be a rack gear  with a slope that reached 14 percent; It would then follow a kilometer and a half of funicular line with a slope of 18 to 60 percent and at the end of the funicular it would be 500 metres below the top of Mulhacén. In short, the ordinary tram would run along the riverbed of the Genil river to the Estrella mines; in the Val de Casillas it would become a funicular to the Laguna del Mulhacén and the rest of the way to the mountain top would be by ski lift or elevator.