The route we are now featuring was the northern end of a large railway line that originated in Barcelona. The main reason for laying down these tracks was to bring the generous deposits of coal hidden under the slopes of the Sierra Caballera, in Ogassa, a few kilometres from the historic town of Sant Joan de les Abadesses, down to the port and the rich industrial area of Barcelona.

In fact, it was a mining company, Ferrocarril y Minas de San Juan de las Abadesas, that was in charge of building this difficult line that ascended arduously along the banks of the Ter. Opened in 1880, the passenger service was limited to Sant Joan and, after a few years as an independent company, in 1887, NORTE took over the line and integrated it into its Catalan network.

In 1920 the entire route was electrified, which helped to improve the operation of this railway. It was precisely in this decade that its final stretch was boosted by the traffic generated by the new line of the Trans-Pyrenean Railway, built by the State from Ripoll to the Spanish-French border between Puigcerdá and La Tour de Carol.

The mining crisis in this region caused the final section of this railway, between Ripoll and Ogassa, to go into decline. Although at first this only affected freight traffic, due to the line’s lack of maintenance and progressive loss of quality, it resulted in a continuous decrease in passengers. Finally, in the early eighties, there was a temporary suspension of traffic for safety reasons that eventually led to its permanent closure in 1985.

Thirteen years later, the Ripollés region promoted an operation to convert this abandoned section into a greenway, a further commitment to the development of a high-quality tourism sector on the rise in these Pyrenean landscapes rich in art and nature.