Line Z (Tren Interoceánico)
Railway line of Ferrocarril del Istmo de Tehuantepec
Line Z (Spanish: Línea Z) is a main line operated by Ferrocarril del Istmo de Tehuantepec connecting Coatzacoalcos and Salina Cruz on the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. It is leased to Ferrosur.
History
The potential of the route from the Atlantic to the Pacific across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec has long been appreciated. As early as 1814 the Spanish government authorized a canal across the Isthmus. Soon after Mexico became independent in 1821, surveys were carried out which recommended constructing a plank trail for wagons through the Chivela Pass, with the northernmost part of the route using the Coatzacoalcos River which flows northward to the Gulf of Mexico on the Atlantic side of the isthmus. The river would be dredged to allow navigation. Nothing came of either of these plans.
More serious planning began in the early 1840s, when José de Garay, the First Officer of the Ministry of War obtained a concession on the route and carried out a more thorough survey. After many failed attempts to obtain funding, the concession was taken over by a New Orleans company, The Tehuantepec Railroad Company of New Orleans (TRCNO). Despite diplomatic problems over the status of the concession, a further survey of the route was carried out by Major John G. Barnard.
“Line Z (Tren Interoceánico)” enters the record as railway line of Ferrocarril del Istmo de Tehuantepec. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Line, Tren and Interoceánico can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q130281721. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1814 and 1821.
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This entry incorporates text from “Line Z (Tren Interoceánico)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.