History of rail transport in Nicaragua

In 1876, President Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Alfaro enacted a decree, calling for a construction of a railway from Corinto via Chinandega and León to the nearest port on Lake Managua (later Western division).

The first engine arrived at Chinandega in November 1880, and the first segment – Corinto to Chinadega – was completed and put into operation March 10, 1882.

In 1885, a contract was signed for the construction of Ferrocarril a Los Pueblos de Carazo, branching from the "Eastern division" in Masaya towards Diriamba, across an area of coffee farming.

This made obsolete the steamboat connection across Lago de Managua and the branch to Puerto Momotombo was abandoned in 1903.

The line should have stretched 288 km from San Miguelito (a port at Lake Nicaragua) through a difficult terrain to Monkey Point at the Caribbean coast.

Ferrocarril del Ingenio San Antonio connected with the national network at Chichigalpa, and ran for 17 kilometres (11 mi) to Puerto Esparta.

Private investors built the Ferrocarril de la Bragman's Bluff, an isolated 100-kilometre-long (60 mi) standard gauge line between Puerto Cabezas and Cocoland.

[3] The route is shown on a US Marine Corps tracing of a Standard Fruit & Steamship Corporation map of 1928 (Bragman's Bluff Division).

The route is shown on a US Marine Corps tracing of a Standard Fruit & Steamship Corporation map of 1928 (Bragmam Buuff Division [sic]).

Slightly further east an 1894 Mosquito Coast map, held by the Library of Congress, shows Emery's Railroad.

Emery had lumber concessions in the area.The amended 1898 contract stipulated that Emery would build 50 miles of railway for his own use and that this work would meet various specifications in terms of design, rolling stock, warehouses, water towers, rail bed, rail quality, width of tracks, and so on.

(see reference 24 of cited article)[4]Additional lines on the Pacific coast were built in the subsequent decades.

[7] Most lines were shut down on December 31, 1993 by President Violeta Chamorro who ordered the rolling stock and rail demolished and sold for scrap.