doi:10.1177/00225266251374547engEsteban-Oliver, GuillermoSanchís-Maldonado, VíctorBarquín Gil, RafaelA well-tracked path? Assessing the factors behind the expansion of Spain's nineteenth-century railway networkART-2025-146648This study investigates the determining factors of railway expansion in nineteenth-century Spain, a period characterised by limited political interference in route planning but substantial public subsidies for construction. For the analysis, we developed a new dataset on municipal railway access from 1848 to 1910 and used Cox regression to assess the key factors influencing network development. The results show that economic criteria prevailed until 1877. From then on, the focus shifted to political and administrative interests, but without abandoning the economic interest. This finding nuances the interpretation of railway expansion in Spain as primarily driven by political and nation-building goals, showing instead a dynamic interaction between economic and administrative priorities over time.2025http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/16508510.1177/00225266251374547http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/165085oai:zaguan.unizar.es:165085Journal of Transport History (2025), [34 pp.]by-nchttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.esinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess