Hi there.
I'm from Spain, and I've been following this forum for some time.
I'm not sure, but I guess this must be my first post here. Edit: Turns out it wasn't, I already posted three times before, but I didn't remember.
And I've just come across this thread.
Researching my holiday destination Marbella, I found that it has no rail station, and it seemes it never had.
For a town of it size that seem surprising. Does anyone have any background info why a line was never build?
Would enough demand exist for an Algeciras to Marbella to Malaga train?
Indeed there is.
Between Malaga and Algeciras you find the following towns/cities
(I only include the towns/cities on the line or that would be directly involved in its extension, and the three biggest cities that wouldn't, but which are within the catchment area anyway):
Malaga (pop 567,000, plus the Malaga airport)
Torremolinos (pop 67,000 in low season)
Benalmadena (pop 66,000 in low season)
Fuengirola (pop 76,000 in low season)
^^
All of these are served by the Malaga-Fuengirola railway line, with a Renfe commuter rail service (around 3tph each way).
Beyond Fuengirola there are:
Mijas (pop 77,000 in low season)
Marbella (pop 138,000 in low season)
Estepona (pop 66,000 in low season)
Casares (pop 5,700 in low season)
Manilva (pop 14,000 in low season)
La Linea de la Concepcion (pop 63,000, and located next to the UK town of Gibraltar, pop 28,000, plus the Gibraltar airport)
^^
All of these have never had passenger railway, ever.
Only La Linea used to have a freight railway branch from San Roque, but nowadays it doesn't anymore, it was closed (the trackbed remains, and I think the tracks too, but they're beyond use).
The others have never ever had any railway of any kind.
Finally, beyond La Linea de la Concepcion there are:
San Roque (pop 29,000 in low season, where the Madrid-Algeciras main line reaches the coast)
Los Barrios (pop 22,000)
Algeciras (pop 118,000)
^^
These last three are served by the Madrid-Algeciras main line, but since the Madrid main line is mainly for freight and long-distance traffic, there are not many passengers, as it is so mountainous and bendy, hence travel times are far from ideal for commuting, and of course the inland is not as populated.
And across the strait, there are two more sizeable towns, which are within the catchment area of Algeciras:
Ceuta (pop 85,000, just opposite Algeciras, a Spanish exclave in Africa)
Tangier (pop 974,000, the main northern Moroccan city, a little further west from Ceuta, but close enough)
I haven't counted the unregistered permanent population, nor obviously the temporary population and the tourists.
If you know the place, you'll tell it gets rather congested in summer, but even in winter it's not very well connected at all.
So I guess that by the mere numbers, the extension would mean a lot of passengers.
The main issue is its cost.
It seems some studies have taken place to extend the Malaga - Fuengirola line to Marbella and then further on to Estepona.
These studies have been made all over the decades since the 1970's till 2015, with no outcome at all.
The locals are rather angry at that, they want the extension so badly.
The quick answer is 'wasn't worth it'. Marbella was a small village when the railways were being built
The line as originally planned was to continue beyond Fuengirola to reach Algeciras and Gibraltar.
And the British were involved in the beginning, as usual in Southern Spain.
But the original company went broke, and I think a Belgian one took over. The section between Malaga and Fuengirola opened in 1916, in metric gauge.
I don't remember under which company it happened, but they just ran out of money to carry on further west of Fuengirola.
Much later on, under Franco, it was nationalized. And in 1970, it was closed for the upgrade, electrification and regauging, reopening in 1975.
Much more recently, between 2000 and 2010, it has been upgraded again, doubling some sections, and putting underground three stations to make room for the extension of the Malaga airport and the Madrid-Malaga HSL.
Malaga - Fuegnirola was originally metre gauge (like the north coast narrow gauge route). Only regauged when the Costa del Sol development got so big,
In the 1970's.
Pity that the other metric lines (Malaga to Coin, Malaga to Velez-Malaga) weren't regauged.
They were closed and dismantled before the Fuengirola line was regauged.
If only they had kept them going for a few years longer, it's quite likely that they would have been regauged too...
and the rugged nature of many of Spain's coastal strips and low population of the coast between Malaga and Gibraltar did not suit railway construction.
It's not as rugged there, the difficult part would be east of Malaga, between Nerja and Almeria, not west of Malaga between Fuengirola and San Roque.
The problem is not really the geography, it's that it's so heavily built on that it's become so expensive, as most of it between Fuengirola and Estepona will have to be underground to skip the cost of demolitions... and the nimbys.
Railways in Spain were built slowly and later than average for Europe.
The first Spanish railway line was in 1837. Spain had a large network by the 1860s, only that we chose to develop it first and most in... Cuba, the Peninsula (and Puerto Rico) lagging way behind Cuba.
Curiously, the Cuban network was in standard gauge, mainly.
While the Peninsular network had (has) THAT gauge. God knows why.
Needless to say, when we lost Cuba in 1898, the authorities realised what a big fvck-up that had been. And since we were left in a really bad financial position (not counting the post-Napoleon state in which the country already was), that led us to the rock bottom (Spanish Civil War).
^^
Which led us to...
Some lines were started but never finished, the north coast narrow gauge was completed fully only in the 1960s.
You must think we're crazy, as we're building so many new lines and that... we probably are, let's just say that we're just trying to get back on track in terms of infrastructure. The problem is that we seem uncapable of getting rid of our own politicians, so inevitably some infrastructures that weren't needed were built, while other infrastructures that are badly needed remain deep down in the drawer.
).