Sammy,

Thanks for your post. Most, if not all, of Robert Wayner's books are self published. He is a very nice fellow and I have spoken with him a couple of times. Seems to me that about 1990 was the end for most of the really neat stuff. I'd love to go with someone knowledgeable as a tour guide, but how safe is it for gringos?

Best,
Mike

Another point about Mexico...if I can figure out how to explain it...is ownership of property. Until NAFTA 20% of everything sold in (or imported to) Mexico had to be made in Mexico...unless there was an act of law passed by their Federal Government. That is why you used to see all manner of Fords (for example) in the US but all you would see down there was 4-door Escorts and one style of F-150's. Ford had built an assembly line for just those two styles in Mexico and that was all they could get. So...when NdeM wanted those passenger cars they had to pass some kind of law to allow them to be imported. So who do they belong to now? How easy would it be to actually take possesion of them? Would it take an act of congress? Does anybody remember the hurdy-gurdy that it took to get the PAs back? So even if you found something interesting...who would you talk to about buying it? Can you say bribe in Spanish? I think it is morbiba...which means...the "bite". OUCH!
T7

See also March 1991 Trains, which shows railroading in Saudi Arabia and shows:
Held by Saudi Railway Organization (basically the state RR) in container yard in Dammam for preservation:
N&W Pullman-built Powhatan Arrow tavern-lounge-obs in gray;
two dozen former Burlington Budd-built stainless-steel Texas Zephyr cars, including at least one round-end observation, which were purchased from a leasing company and used for six years, but they could never be made sand/dust-tight;
"several" ex-New Haven heavyweight cars;
4 RDCs converted to trailer coaches.

Mr Newriver and Mr Termite,

You spell the word for bribe as "mordida". It does mean bite, as correctly noted. A more discrete term is "besitos" (little kisses), or maybe "propinita" (little tip). Better still is "sus cuentas de nogocios" (your business expenses).

If you want to get an idea of how somebody such as myself might handle a project such as you dream of, I would suggest going to the website for Ferrovias Guatemala, which can be found by doing a little digging on: http://www.rrdc.com After you get to the railroad's page, scroll down a ways and look for my two articles about working down there. The second one, "The Story of Two Wayward Tenders" describes the recovery of two tenders from Guatemala for the Sumpter Valley.

How safe is it for gringos ??? If you are just interested in passenger cars, and you are willing to listen to good advice from the locals and retired rails, there is no reason you should not be able to stay out of trouble. But if you are careless, disrespectful of Mexican people or culture, or in any way looking for trouble, you will most likely find some.

Somehow I have survived all my adventures, so far....

I last traveled to Nuevo Laredo Father's Day weekend 1991. My father looked Hispanic and spoke fluent Spanish, and knew how to get access just about anywhere. It was still NdeM, with that beautiful two-tone blue with orange striping.
There was a wide variety of passenger equipment, and ancient freight equipment everywhere! I think the decade-old SD40-2s were the newest things in the yard, RSD-12s were being used as yard goats. The Mexicans basically had Amtrak on their entire system - underfunded, struggling, and inefficient. The Pentrex videos of the era (still available) show passenger cars with rust holes in the side. Almost everything was beyond worn out, but they kept it rolling somehow.
Privatization was necessary, and it doesn't surprise me that so much was scrapped by the new management.

CD

Screw eBay. Send me the postage. It's in a pile that was going to "free giveaway". PM me for an address to send the SASE. (Weigh an 84-page issue.)

Canadian Pacific Railway built some sleeping cars in the post war called the "Grove" series. They were painted steel, smooth side, streamlined. I understand some of these went to Mexico? It would be of interest if any of these have survived. They were superceded on CPR by the stainless steel "Canadian" equipment.
Thank you.

Based on several trips I made to Mexico late '80's/early '90's, the former Grove series 10-5 CP shops built sleepers were all out of service by that time, though I got pictures of some in storage in several locations. So in my opinion it's very unlikely any were saved for preservation.

Topfuel,
Thank you regarding the 'Grove' series. I have vague recollections of Canadian Pacific selling other equipment to Mexico, perhaps some of the smooth-side coaches. They had a fleet of streamlined equipment before the stainless fleet. Some of the coaches in the 2200 series lingered in reserve until near the end of CPR passenger service.

Well, I've been trying on Flickr to find out the story of some of the Mexican equipment. According to one source, the cars are rotting away in the middle of a street (?!)

The ex CZ dome obs, coupled to the ex NYC obs.
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/draco_66/9264464817/

The Dome Obs is ex-WP "Silver Planet"-- what a sad fate for such a beautiful car. Not sure of the ID of the ex-NYC car. Interesting to note the "modifications" done to the Silver Planet-- particularly the unusual trucks and the replacement windows, especially the flat, undersized ones in what's left of the dome.

Also, according to MEXLIST, five ex-Amtrak 10-6 Heritage sleepers purchased by VIA were sold to Ferromex last year, possibly for OCS service.

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/M ... sage/17362

The high-windowed round end ex-NYC obs in the picture is the former Sunrise Brook.

The retrofit trucks under the S. Planet are the "Napoleon" style trucks that came from one of the Japanese-built coaches (see the low-level car at the far left in the picture). As odd as they look, this was a common retrofit to former US Heritage-style cars in the late days of Mexican passenger service, though the conversion on the S. Planet has been done comparatively recently.

Silver Planet does not look that bad. I'm not sure we should be referring to the car's "fate" just yet.

It'd be great if the folks in Portola could repatriate the car. They have made some nice progress assembling the cars needed to recreate the California Zephyr.

At least vandals aren't breaking out any "original" glass in the Silver Planet. I'd be more concerned about whether the haphazard modifications to the dome can be reversed and repaired. It looks like there's some kind of fabricated cap that's been installed atop the upper dome windows and some kind of inner frame structure holding flat windows in place of the original curved ones in some spots. I'm not even sure what's going on with those end windows on the dome. Not exactly museum-quality fabrication work.

If you do a Google map search for Arenal, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, you can see the whole 7-car trainset parked right on the street. There's even a Google Street View with high enough resolution that you can peek right in the windows. There are three lightweight sleeping cars along with the two observations, a heavyweight car, and one of the Japanese-built coaches with rooftop AC units. Interestingly, that car seems to be in the worst condition even though it is much newer.

There are 5 other passenger cars just north of the ones in the street inside an industrial yard of some kind, too- also on Arenal st. They appear to be part of the same trainset.

Boy, you gotta love that Google street view. Thank's to davew833's direction, I was in San Luis Potosi in about 10 minutes. Sure beats the heck out of having to get on a plane to go down there.

Looks like the 3 lightweight sleepers are 2 rare ex-AT&SF Blue-series 10-3-2 sleepers (PS 1948) and 1 ACL County-series 10-6 (PS 1949). I suspect that these are all cars that came out of Anbel Corp in the early 1990's. I remember seeing them in Brownsville, TX about that time, before they left for Mexico.

I'll see if I can find the other 5 cars that davew833 refers to.