El ferrocarril orense y su aprovechamiento turístico.

Abstract

The history of the railroad as a means of transport between the Sierra region and Costa has been losing importance in several cities due to industrialization. However, through the Ecuadorian cruise train project it was possible to promote and develop the tourism sector on a large scale, where the beneficiaries were many. The greatest achievement of this project was to leave the name of Ecuador high, making itself known worldwide. The Orense train, a symbol of unity that through its railway system united the most important sites of the province for the transfer and export of products. Today, their conditions are not optimal and the population does not know what the railroad represented for the development of the towns. Therefore, it has been proposed to design a tourist railway between the old stations of Playas and Piedras to promote the use of the existing industrial infrastructure. The research process is based on exploratory research, to analyze factors that intervene in the objectivity of the case study. The data collected are qualitative in nature and focus on descriptive aspects. Two research methods, theoretical and empirical-inductive, were used for the research process. In the theoretical part was carried out the bibliographic review of the various secondary sources such as scientific articles, books and news. While in the empirical-inductive part, several methodological instruments were applied to obtain information. The most relevant was a digital survey aimed at the population of the province of El Oro, where the sample was 384. The results obtained reflected the acceptance of the proposal, the ignorance of the history of the Orense railroad and at the same time the interest to know more about this topic. In addition, an interview was also conducted with the authorities, which provided answers to a number of questions raised at the beginning of the investigation regarding the conditions in which the object of study was found. In addition, in order to measure environmental impacts and from this establish mitigation measures, a Leopold Matrix was made, also known as the cause - effect matrix. It was concluded that the project is viable in the social, technical and environmental dimensions. In the economic dimension, the same cannot be said because of the lack of budget on the part of the regulatory body due to the health emergency that the country is going through due to the spread of Covid-19. The proposal is considered to be beneficial for the development of the tourism sector of the province due to the increase and diversification of the supply. To this end, it is planned to keep the locomotives in optimum conditions for their exhibition, to build a section of railway route and to request a railway for their circulation. The realization of this project requires the support of the provincial authorities and multidisciplinary team. To this is added the role of society to take care of what belongs to them and with what they identify.