Nariz del Diablo (Devil's Nose)
Nariz del Diablo
Interesting facts
- Over the Devil's Nose section, the line gains roughly 500 metres of height in only about 12 kilometres of track between Sibambe and Alausí.
- Thousands of labourers were recruited from Jamaica around 1900 for this stretch, and estimates of the workers who died building it run into the thousands.
- Disease was the deadliest obstacle: malaria, yellow fever and dysentery, along with heavy rains, earthquakes and venomous snakes, repeatedly stalled construction.
- The line was pushed through by President Eloy Alfaro, who in 1897 signed a contract with the American financier Archer Harman to finish the railway.
- Archer Harman and his brother John, the company's chief engineer, came from Staunton, Virginia, and set up the Guayaquil and Quito Railway Company in New Jersey.
- The route was long dismissed as impossible to build and has come to be nicknamed the most difficult railway in the world.
- After crossing the Devil's Nose in 1901, the tracks reached the town of Alausí on 8 September 1902.
- The whole line was completed on 25 July 1908, when Alfaro inaugurated Chimbacalle station in Quito amid public celebrations.
Why it is worth it
In the Andes of central Ecuador, a sheer rock spur about 100 metres high juts out over the gorge of the Chanchán river, and a railway climbs straight up its face. This is the Nariz del Diablo, the Devil's Nose, originally known as the Nariz de Pistishi after the parish in Alausí canton, Chimborazo Province, where it stands. The rock is famous less for itself than for the line that conquers it: unable to wind its way around such a steep wall, the engineers laid the track in tight curves across the cliff and joined the levels with two switchbacks, so that trains climb by running forward into a dead end, reversing up the next leg and then setting off forward again.
The Devil's Nose is the most dramatic stretch of Ecuador's railway between Guayaquil and Quito, begun in 1899, completed in 1908 and regarded at the time as a feat of engineering. The southern part of the route rises from the coastal lowlands at Durán, opposite Guayaquil, through Bucay at about 300 metres to Sibambe at around 1,800 metres, then on up to Alausí at 2,360 metres and Riobamba at 2,754 metres, crossing several climate zones on the way. The zigzag at the Nariz del Diablo accounts for a large share of that climb, gaining height on a cliff where a conventional line could find no room.
At the foot of the rock, in the Chanchán valley, lies Sibambe station, where the main line to Durán once divided from a branch running south to Cuenca by way of Chunchi and Azogues; that branch was completed in 1965. For decades riding on the carriage roofs was an ordinary way to travel along this line, and it became part of its legend before being banned in the 2000s.
Getting there
The Devil's Nose lies in Alausí canton, in Chimborazo Province, a few kilometres from the town of Alausí, whose station is the upper end of the railway section over the switchbacks. The nearest larger city by straight line is Azogues, about 55 km to the south. The nearest airport is Mariscal Lamar Airport (CUE) in Cuenca, about 73 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Ferrocarriles del Ecuador Empresa Pública 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.
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