forjas inglesas

13:33 Mar 30, 2011 

Many thanks all for your comments, I think you are right in suggesting it refers the old lines (produced in English foundries) being made redundant.

18:24 Dec 15, 2010 

I think that "importado de las forjas inglesas" is a piece of information with no big relevance - just to mark the origin of the railways (eg. in Argentina, most of our railways were imported fm England in those times.) I agree with NKW.

14:10 Dec 15, 2010 

In several web pages it says that an engineer called Henry Saint James was involved in the reconstruction of Atocha in 1890-92. This sounds like an English name. It seems a bit fishy, though, because I can't find any information on him.

14:02 Dec 15, 2010 

It probably refers to a 288-metre length of rail forged at British foundries or at UK-built foundries established in Spain. It is unclear whether this is of historic interest (Atocha was the first railway station to be built in Madrid) or of different significance, but the remainder of that sentence (..no sirve..) suggests that it has no specific purpose.
Atocha was re-built and the track layout was substantially altered between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s.