Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railroad, the company which started building the "Copper Canyon" line.
Quoted below is material from this site:
http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/tonysarticles/cpprcanarticle.html
For an unusual winter break, how about a Mexican train ride? The Reader's Digest called Mexico's famous Copper Canyon railroad trip, "the most dramatic train ride in the western hemisphere". Even that description fails to do justice to the spectacular scenery and sightseeing along the line.
The railroad was originally built to give southern Texas farm produce access to a Pacific port. It is still the only major transport link across the Western Sierra Madre for a very long way in any direction, though a paved road will soon open this area up like never before!
The line runs from Ojinaga on the Texas-Mexico border to Chihuahua and then west through canyon country to the Pacific port of Topolobampo, near Los Mochis. The railroad's construction ran into all kinds of problems - from the opening of the competitive Panama canal route, to the Mexican Revolution (which began in 1910), but the greatest obstacle was the apparently untameable Sierra.
IMPOSSIBLE?
The initial capital was mostly American but both the investors and their hired engineers gave up the project in the first half of this century, pronouncing it "impossible". After nationalizing all foreign-owned railroad lines, Mexico announced, in 1953, plans to complete the Copper Canyon line which at the time still lacked a route through the most difficult part of the mountain range, near Temoris.
Eight years later, the line was finished. It had involved some extraordinary engineering and the final cost was over US$100 million. The highlights include the elegant La Laja canyon bridge, which comes immediately after a tunnel at km 638, a complete 360 degree loop at El Lazo, km 585 (there are only three comparable examples anywhere in North America) and a 180 degree turn inside a tunnel near Temoris at km 708. Incidentally, the kilometre numbers for the entire line are taken from the eastern terminus at Ojinaga.
Between Chihuahua and Los Mochis, the section usually travelled by tourists, there are 37 bridges and 86 tunnels; most of them are between Los Mochis and Creel. The line crosses the Continental Divide three times, reaches a maximum height of 2400 m, and for much of its route skirts the rim of an enormous canyon system.
BIGGER THAN THE GRAND CANYON
This canyon system is what gives the railway its name. Strictly speaking, the Copper Canyon is only one of a number of interlocking canyons or barrancas in the area. Not only are these barrancas deeper and narrower than the U.S. Grand Canyon, they are also longer. Whereas the Grand Canyon is desert-like, with virtually no vegetation, the Copper Canyon is thickly wooded in most places and a beautiful green, especially in the rainy season from June to October.
Also, see:
http://www.coppercanyon-mexico.com/cc-mex/cctren.htm
