The Linares Baeza–Almería railway is an Iberian-gauge railway line in

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. It branches from the

Alcázar de San Juan–Cádiz railway The Alcázar de San Juan–Cádiz railway is an important Iberian-gauge railway line in Spain. It branches from the Madrid–Valencia railway at Alcázar de San Juan and terminates in Cádiz. It was once the only line linking Madrid to Seville, b ...

at Linares and terminates in Almería. It is currently the main line linking

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

Almería Almería (, , ) is a city and municipality of Spain, located in Andalusia. It is the capital of the province of the same name. It lies on southeastern Iberia on the Mediterranean Sea. Caliph Abd al-Rahman III founded the city in 955. The city g ...

Route

The line runs through the provinces of Jaén, Granada and

. The route formerly contained the Hacho Bridge, which was the longest iron viaduct on the Spanish rail network.Chías Navarro, Prop and Abbot Balboa, Tomás: " Bridges of Spain ", FCC, Madrid 1994, pag. 248,

Services

The line is used by all trains from Almería to Madrid, with the full journey taking around six hours. To continue to Madrid from Linares, the line uses the

as far as

Alcázar de San Juan Alcázar de San Juan is a city and municipality of Spain located in the province of Ciudad Real, autonomous community of Castilla–La Mancha. It lies on the plain of La Mancha. From the 13th to the 19th century the history of Alcázar is strongly ...

, and the

Madrid–Valencia railway The Madrid–Valencia railway is the conventional railway line linking the Spanish capital Madrid with the country's third largest city of Valencia in the Valencian Community. It now primarily serves local commuter rail services and regional tr ...

to Madrid Chamartín.

Future

In 2023, Almería railway station will be linked to the

AVE ''Alta Velocidad Española'' (''AVE'') is a service of high-speed rail in Spain operated by Renfe, the Spanish national railway company, at speeds of up to . As of December 2021, the Spanish high-speed rail network, on part of which the AVE s ...

high-speed rail network by the

Murcia–Almería high-speed rail line The Murcia–Almería high-speed rail line is an under-construction railway in the Region of Murcia and Andalusia in Spain. History Murcia and Almería were once linked by rail from Lorca, Spain, Lorca to Guadix via Baza, Granada, Baza, however t ...

, allowing a 3.5 hour journey to Madrid, compared to over six hours using the Linares Baeza–Almería railway, which will therefore decrease in importance.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Linares Baeza-Almeria railway Rail transport in Andalusia Railway lines in Spain Iberian gauge railways