Not very much is really known about this line since, as it always belonged to a private company, practically all records of its operations disappeared along with the railway itself. The earliest projects involving the area date back to 1890 and talk about a railway between Haro and Pradoluengo. Later plans considered possible branch lines to Burgos from Belorado and in 1891 there were plans to build a branch line from Casalarreina to Ezcaray.
Finally, after a great deal of talk but not much action, the only railway eventually built in La Rioja Alta (apart from the Ebro Valley broad gauge railway) was the one that concerns us here, the Haro-Ezcaray line. The first train ran on the line on July 9, 1916. But like so many rural narrow gauge railways it was destined to be a very modest enterprise and it never employed more than 85 people
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In 1956, at one of the high spots of the railway’s short life, the line carried 34,000 tons of goods and 210,000 passengers. Soon those figures were to fall dramatically as more and more people left the countryside and the private car increasingly made its presence felt. Gradually the railway began to lose more and more money until it was finally closed one cold winter’s morning on January 15, 1964.
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