Originally Posted by
Track
The best part of El Tapatio was the ex-New York Central round-end lounge observation car on the end. At least it was in 1976 when I rode the train (through ex-NYC sleeper from Nogales on El Conteno/El Tapatio to Mexico City). From Guadalajara to Mexico City the train was all-sleeper, plus the diner and lounge car - the coaches and heavy-weight diner went only as far as Guadalajara.
Indeed. Back in the early 1970s I used to ride the train from Mexicali down the coast to Empalme (just outside Guaymas) and once to Guadalajara. On that Guadalajara train, we picked up a lounge car at Benjamin Hill that to this day remains the finest lounge car I have ever ridden in. It featured overstuffed lounge chairs, a beautiful wooden stand up bar and if I remember correctly some potted plants. The Mexican railroads took advantage of a lot of surplus equipment from US railroads after Amtrak took over passenger operations in 1971. Amtrak ran only a fraction of the trains that were operating just one year earlier, so there were lots of surplus cars, some of them quite nice.Additionally, back then most of these cars were still in pretty good shape, having been built in the late forties and early fifties. By the late eighties however, they were definitely showing their age, a problem exacerbated by the fact that for the most part they were not well maintained on a regular basis. I count myself lucky to have logged a lot of time in quality accommodations aboard inexpensive Mexican trains in the 1980s. By the early 1990s, after Mexico had deregulated its airline industry and cheaper air travel proliferated, intercity rail travel came to an end with just a couple odd-ball exceptions, one of them being the Copper Canyon train between Chihuahua and Los Mochis. I rode First Class on this train in 1984 for about $15 USD. When I rode the new tourist railroad CHEPE over the same route in 2006, I paid $143.00.