International Railroad Discussion > Questions about San Jose, Costa Rica

In February my wife and I will be taking a trip to Costa Rica.   This is not intended as a railfan trip, but we have one day in San Jose and I'm interested in seeing what I can of trains there.   In general I understand there is not a lot of activity, but there has been some revitalization of passenger rail around San Jose.   I'd love to get pictures of the former Spanish meter gauge DMUs if possible.
We are staying near the airport right next to the line to Alajuela.     It looks to me like that track is dormant at best right now, but I'm not sure.    A little south of there is the Belen station and it looks like there might be scheduled trains into that station.   
I'm always impressed by the breadth of knowledge on this board, so I'd welcome any comments or suggestion of what is reasonable and possible in San Jose.

Stephen



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/16 07:57 by rfdatalink.

We will be going back to CR,maybe Feb.Not sure yet.It will be our forth trip.
The only active line that I know of is between SJ and Limon.
 get a good map of CR and look for railroads.I know a lot of rails are
left,but no trains.

Uncle Joe,Seffner,Fl.

I looked on Google and found a lot of answers to your question.

UJ

Went on a cruise years ago but we made port on the 
east side of the country. Many tourist lines there.

Here are 3 pics from the trip in 2010
Train-Car Interior-Track

Jay
Sumner, WA.

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There are several Mon-Fri commuter rail operations radiating from San Jose.  The one that goes closest to the airport runs from the Atlantic station, just east of downtown San Jose, to Heredia.  Heredia is about seven miles east of the San Jose international airport.  They are slowly rebuilding the line further west.  The plan as I understand it is to eventually run to Alajuela, just north of the airport.  The line would run very near the airport but I don't know if any sort of airport connection is planned.  I was in San Jose in October and caught a brief view of this line where it runs near the main highway that serves the airport.  It looked like the line had been renewed as I saw concrete ties.  As for the San Jose to Limon line, the center section through the moutains has been out of use since the 90's due to earthquake damage.  The east end of the line still hauls pineapples down to Limon and I think there is also still tourist trains that operate in conjuction with tour ships.