The railway from La Puebla de Híjar to Tortosa is a railway project that began to see the light of day in the last third of the 19th century. The construction of this railway, whose initial objective was only to reach the town of Alcañiz, began in 1882.  In 1887 the tracks were completed in the easy section from La Puebla de Híjar to Alcañiz, where the general workshops and the locomotive depot were installed. But from that very moment the desire to emulate the Ebro and take the rails to its mouth next to Sant Carles de la Rápita, and link up in Tortosa with the Norte coastal line, made the company change its name to one more in line with its objectives: "Compañía de los Ferrocarriles de Zaragoza al Mediterráneo."

But reality prevailed over wishes, and the company's economic performance –which was poor of course– led it, in 1899, to abandon the railway business. The public company "Explotación de Ferrocarriles por Estado" took over this languid line, adopting as its own those objectives of reaching the sea. Work resumed with vigour, especially during the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. The ill-fated Spanish Civil War, paradoxically, gave the final boost to the work that had almost been completed during the Second Republic, since its route proved to be a crucial logistical tool for the rebels during the Battle of the Ebro. Its trenches and embankments, covered by blood from both sides, saw how more and more rails were urgently laid down. After the war, legions of Republican prisoners completed that provisional work, with the Alcañiz-Bot section being opened in October 1939 followed by the rest of the route to Tortosa shortly after, in September 1941. Such haste gave rise to provisional stations, of which the one at La Torre del Compte still exists. The tracks never reached the planned Mediterranean end point in Sant Carles (despite the fact that the earthwork was completed). The railway’s economic performance was never brilliant: a hard operation, through rugged terrain featuring steep slopes and unstable ground, with stations in remote locations of the towns, undermined the balance sheets of a railway whose existence was questioned year after year. In 1971, the collapse of a tunnel was the providential excuse for the operation of the entire line to be permanently terminated after two years of bus transfers, with the tracks being dismantled 25 years later.