... in response to Sheesh! Where in Mexico?, posted by MarkInTx on Apr 27, 2002I was riding the afternoon/night train from Veracruz to Mexico City when this happened. I think it was 1976. I understand that they closed all (or most, I'm not sure) of the passenger service on the railroads a couple of years ago. In those days, they had some OLD rolling stock, the "special" first class cars were US surplus from the 1950's (and you didn't have to look too hard to read B & O or Atlantic Coast Line through the repaint job that said Nacionales de Mexico) and had airconditioning that sometimes almost worked--problem was when it didn't work you were misserable because the windows did not open, the first class cars and sleepers were US surplus from the 1930's or 1940's. Some of the second class cars seemed to have been in service since before the revolution, they were made out of vertical wooden boards and had a skylight/vent system down the center of the roof, the kind of cars you see the bad guys chasing on horseback in an old western. Smoking was allowed in second class but not in the other classes. The engines (at least the ones I saw) were all fairly small General Motors diesel electrics that would have been used in a switching yard or for a very small local freight in the US. A typical train would be engine-baggage/express-special first class-sleeper-1 or 2 first class and 3 or 4 second class. In special, first and sleeper they only sold as many tickets as they had seats (or beds), but for second class, they sold as many tickets as they had people and you would sit with 5 or 6 people sharing 4 seats and sometmes there were still people standing in the isles. There was no resturant car, but railroad workers (porters) sold beer and softdrinks (at 3 times the "street" price) and at every little town some women and teenage girls would get on with baskets of sandwiches, tamales and buckets of coffee and "canela" etc., which they hoped to sell before they arrived at their destination, one or two stops down the line. Apparently they made or at least supplimented their living doing this and were friends or relatives who teamed up "you can stay at my house when we work the eastbound train and I'll stay at yours when we work the westbound train tomorrow". I made the DF/Veracruz run 5 or 6 times round trip and once had to stand all the way to Veracruz, which was 13 hours. On the other hand, it only cost about $2.00US and Mexico City to Cuidad Juarez was about $4.50US (39 hours one way). A couple of other things that might interest railroad buffs, the crossties were all made out of cement instead of wood and dispatching was still done via hand keyed telegraphs.
