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The opening of Spain's first railway in 1848 inaugurated a short-lived period of railway euphoria that consumed the imaginations of Spaniards and resulted in the rapid development of nearly 5,000 km of track. While most historians of Spain's nineteenth century concede that the effort failed to trigger the industrialization many had hoped for, it did stimulate the minds of those primed to fantasize about the Spanish future then being constructed with iron and steam. Fueling these dreams of a hyper-modernized future was the dark specter of Spanish decline, a narrative with roots in the seventeenth century and an influential cultural force in the nineteenth. Nineteenth-century railway boosters and journalists frequently conjured up stirring images of a prostrate Spain being lifted out of the mire of decline and re-joining the nations of Europe. This article explores how popular anticipation at the prospect of railways prompted an infectious feeling of possibility that echoed across Spain and promised, if only for a bright and fleeting moment, to ease Spanish insecurities and allow the nation to finally free itself of the terrible burden of its past failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish passenger railway market saw the entrance of two competitors in 2022–2023: the full-service operator Iryo and the low-cost operator Ouigo. Using a unique dataset of Spanish ticket price collected throughout an entire year and the Diff-In-Diff method, this paper investigates the impact on incumbent's prices of newcomers' entrance on the less congested corridors Madrid - Alicante and Madrid - Malaga/Sevilla. The Spanish government's strategy seems to be successful: the decision to lead the liberalisation process and the choice of having up to three asymmetric competitors induced a significant decrease in price even on the less attractive corridors, stimulating the demand and addressing the problem of under-utilization of some high-speed infrastructure. The results show that prices decreased by 28%–30% after nine months of competition. The impact has been the same on both the analysed corridors, despite the competition environment has been different in terms of number of competitors, pricing strategy and market share of those. • Spain is the first country with three competitors in the high-speed railway market. • Competition in high-speed rail in Spain reduced prices by 28%–30% in nine months. • The impact on incumbent's first-class and second-class prices was the same. • Both low-cost and full-service competitors similarly affected incumbent pricing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the increasing importance of railways in the global context, either as a means of transport or as a tourist product, this paper aims to provide an alternative to the closure of the Aranjuez-Cuenca-Utiel railway in Spain. From the point of view of sustainable tourism, it is intended to highlight the role of this railway as a backbone of territorial socioeconomic development. The recovery and enhancement of the Portuguese Duero line is presented as an example for the future of the Cuenca's Province railway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of TST - Transportes, Servicios y Telecomunicaciones is the property of Asociacion Iberica de Historia Ferroviaria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Congestion in infrastructure capacity is a barrier to entry to markets under liberalization. The Spanish rail infrastructure manager, ADIF AV, has implemented an innovative model to reduce such a barrier. ADIF AV optimized capacity by defining the schedule with the most efficient use of tracks, building packages with such track capacity and putting them for tender. Three railway undertakings, the incumbent and two newcomers, will compete in the high-speed market, increasing at least 55% the number of services. This model can be exported to other countries reforming the rail sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Railway applications are in continuous evolution with the aim of offering a more efficient, sustainable, and safer transportation system for the users. Generally, these applications are constantly exchanging information between the systems onboard the train and the trackside through a wireless communication. Nowadays, Global System for Mobile communications-Railway (GSM-R) is the technology used by European Train Control System (ETCS), but it is becoming obsolete. Therefore, alternatives for this technology have to be found for the different railway applications. Its natural evolution is to move forward with the latest technology deployed: Long-Term Evolution (LTE), which the Public Land Mobile Networks (PLMN) have already deployed. Therefore, testing the performance of this communication technology in the railway environment could be useful to assess its suitability and reduce the cost of railway network dedicated deployment. In order to do that, a methodology to characterize the communication environment is proposed. The main goal is to measure geolocated impairments of any communication channel in a railway environment being able to determine its behavior of the different communication technologies and find out possible coverage issues. Moreover, it could help in the selection of suitable communication technology for railway. This paper presents a brief description of the communication for railways and its QoS parameters for performance measuring. Afterward, the testing methodology is described, and then, the communication channel measurement campaign on a real track in Spain where the railway environment is variable is presented (tunnels, rural/urban area...). Finally, the measurements and results on this real track in Spain are shown. The results provide suitability of the 4G technologies based on the delay requirements for the implementation of ETCS over it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The initial period of construction of the Spanish railway network is often criticized for its radial structure, centered on Madrid. In this article, the authors describe the role of the state during the initial stage of railway network construction and confirm that although the political will to construct a centralist network certainly influenced its morphology, other social and economic criteria were also influential. With regard to the political motives behind the radial network, the authors argue that part of this interest could have come in response to perceived needs to strengthen the presence of the Spanish state throughout its national territory and to promote a process of state-building. Finally, it must be stressed that the central hypothesis of our article is that the radial structure of the network was a natural consequence of the strategic geographical position of the country's capital and of the distribution of economic activity within Spanish territory. The article proposes two methodological approaches for evaluating the extent to which the radial design of the network was justified, bearing in mind the locations of Spain's most productive regions. The results of these two exercises suggest that the radial configuration with which the Spanish rail network was originally designed probably arose naturally as a result of the distribution of economic activity within the country and of the relative advantage that this bestowed on certain regions due to their geographic position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of TST - Transportes, Servicios y Telecomunicaciones is the property of Asociacion Iberica de Historia Ferroviaria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Vínculos de Historia is the property of Vinculos de Historia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodistico is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cuadernos de Historia Contemporanea is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the second half of the nineteenth century Portugal undertook an ambitious public works programme in order to develop the kingdom. In that programme, railways took a leading role, especially those routes that linked the main ports of the shoreline to Spain (and thence to France). To do so, a strenuous effort of diplomacy – or more specifically technodiplomacy – was required to convince Spain to accept cross-border links that served the goals of Portugal. In this paper I will analyse this technodiplomatic process and how two countries with different technological perceptions of railways managed to settle their differences and build five transnational links across their borders over the course of 40 years. I aim to add to the debate about the Iberian cross-border links from the point of view of the history of technology, in particular, and to the discussion about transnational technological systems, in general. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There are some rules for 3,000 V DC electrification in the network ruled by the Spanish Railway Infrastructure Authority (ADIF). As far as we know, the correction of the installations is nowadays manually checked by an expert, as expert systems were verified years ago. We propose a computer tool that is an aid for the expert in checking that the positioning of the insulators, circuit breakers, load disconnectors, feeders, etc. fulfills the requirements established. The computer tool allows the expert to automatically check the sections fed in the different scenarios proposed in the requirements. We have found no comparable work in the literature (moreover, this work applies the Spanish railway specifications). In fact, the second author works in a railway electrification company and this work addresses a real world need. Therefore, this is, as far as we know, a novel application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The central focus of this work is to test a new methodology to measure the impact of the railway on the distribution of population, in this case in Spain. To achieve this, it was necessary to previously integrate data relating to population and railway lines into a geographical information system. The result was a spatial database that includes population data from homogeneous census series obtained for the municipal scale and the evolution of the railway network in service at corresponding points in time. This allowed the authors to apply spatial-temporal analysis. By so doing, this work constitutes an analysis of a new methodology, as they used exploratory spatial data analysis and geographically weighted regression to detect spatial patterns and estimate the influence of the railway and distance from the coast on population change. The results obtained show that the influence of the railway was very pronounced in some areas, while in others it was just one of the factors that could explain major changes in population distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the economic role of the diputaciones, political councils, in the Basque Country of Spain, particularly the Diputación Provincial de Guipúzcoa (Provincial Council of Guipúzcoa), during the Restoration during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The author comments on the differences in fiscal policies between the Basque councils and the rest of Spain, including the taxation system and economic investments in such areas as transportation. The influence of the middle class in the Basque Country, known as the bourgeoisie, on economic policy, is also explored.

Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Portugal and Spain started to invest in railways about 15 years after other countries in Europe did the same. The strategies pursued by both these countries were rather different. Whereas Spain tried to create a legal framework wide enough to compass all the details of construction, Portugal opted for a more flexible approach, which could adapt to specific contexts. Comparing the Spanish bibliography about these issues with the Portuguese parliamentary debates and approved laws, the following text aims do describe and explain both countries railway strategies and how the Spanish approach brought an earlier success to this nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In recent years, ground vibrations have become an important issue due to the growing awareness of the society about environmental living conditions. In this way, vibrations caused by trains running near houses or workplaces are considered disturbing for residents. Within this framework, this paper presents a procedure to estimate the vibration path caused by the passing of a train. In order to achieve this, the equations which describe the physical phenomenon are set in the frequency and wavenumber domain and solved by using the Fourier Transform. The obtained analytical solution is transformed back into the time and space domain by means of the Fourier series. The obtained theoretical results are compared with experimental measurements carried out in the Madrid–Barcelona High Speed Line in order to analyse the performance of this procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focused on the commemoration of 150 anniversary of the first railroad that linked the capital of Spain by the Mediterranean Sea, the research project Alicante-Madrid, the first railway line to the Mediterranean. A scenic tour through the province of Alicante raised in 2008 to study the possible recovery of the landscape and heritage railway line Madrid-Alicante with a proposal to conduct a walking path, as a leisure tour throughout the emblematic cultural sites of the province of Alicante whereby railroad has worked for over a century now. The study focused attention on the engineering design of roads and landmarks in those assets of the province of Alicante's most important architecture of transportation (stations, bridges, tunnels). The research project was planned in two phases separate but complementary: the first based on a historical-analytical study of the construction of the Madrid-Alicante railway passing through the province of Alicante, and the second, consisting of a proposal landscape that sought to value and use the Alicante railway heritage [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking business decisions in large corporations requires the establishment of a competent network to channel information, permit the delegation of routine decisions, and assure the whole process is undertaken in the strictest confidence. Recent theories on social networks and the carrying out of the entrepreneurial function tackle these questions and constitute a new perspective for examining business cases. From this viewpoint, the present article seeks to analyse the entrepreneurial network established in Spain by the House of Rothschild between 1835 and 1931. It was a perfectly structured network that differentiated between agents, clientele, partners, and correspondents in a web of firms and institutions that allowed the Rothschilds to exercise their industrial and financial hegemony and consolidate themselves as the country's largest investor in the financial, industrial, railway and mining sectors throughout the stated period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary bilevel algorithms are used for approximating the running resistance on the basis of the long-term fuel consumption data of a diesel passenger train in different routes. The input data comprises the geometry of these routes, speed and acceleration limits and certain engine properties. A running resistance is found for which the consumptions predicted by the model are equal to the logged consumptions of the vehicle for each of the routes in the training set. The model has been validated with simulated data with known properties and also with a diesel-hydraulic railcar operating on a 94 km route in northern Spain. The error in the running resistance estimation using evolutionary algorithms with respect to the measurement with a coasting test was less than 4%. • The running resistance of a train is calculated from the average fuel consumption. • Neither dedicated sensors nor access to the vehicle control unit are required. • A quadratic expression of the resistance is obtained from a reduced set of routes. • Bilevel evolutionary optimization results are consistent with the coasting tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]