Back to Mexico. Here's a photograph I took of the train station in Zamora, Michoacan on March 03, 1997 when my friend Steve Brown and I rode NdeM Train 314 from Yurecuaro, the originating point on the Mexico City-Guadalajara mainline, to Los Reyes, a town located 138 kilometers at the end of the branch. After spending a night in the pretty good sized town of Ocotlan, we took a taxi to Yurecuaro to be in position for the departure of the train. This is where having the book "Train Times in Mexico" by Ed VonNordeck and the late Bill Farmer came in very handy. It's hard to ride trains if you don't know when they operate.

Forty-two kilometers down the branch was the pretty good sized city of Zamora, where we stopped for a few minutes. Here's a photo of the train at the station. Here, also, are some Google streetview pics, similarly composed, taken in June 2019, that show what the area looks like today without the railroad. If you rotate the photo about 180 degrees, you'll see a Baldwin road switcher, that looks like it came from some mining operation, "plinthed" on a display stand.

[goo.gl]

With Google aerial photos you can still trace a lot of places where the railroad ran, but in a lot of areas new highways have been built over the right-of-way or farmers have erased the right of way by expanding their fields, especially on the north portion of the branch. Here's how I described my ride on this train the October 25 and November 15, 1997 editions (Issues 576 and 577) of the now-defunct Rail Travel News.

The next morning in Guadalajara, we hired a taxi and drove east to Atotonilco, a town at the end of a 34-kilometer branch line still offering passenger service. Train 315 (2) for Ocotlan consisted of NdeM 10030 (B23-7), a caboose and a Segunda coach. The train was nearly packed leaving Atotonilco, and dropped off people at the many stops down the branch to the junction with the mainline. We spent the night in Ocotlan, an attractive town on the north shore of Lake Chapala. Next morning, we took another taxi east (again) to the junction town of Yurecuaro, for a rendezvous with Train 314 (3), comprised of NdeM 10039 (B23-7), a Segunda coach and a caboose. Another anomaly, at least by U.S. standards, this train plies a 138- kilometer branch line southward to the town of Los Reyes. Along the scenic line's entire length, Steve and I could find no evidence of any freight business. To make matters worse, at least from a railroad accountant's point of view, we were the only passengers for the last 45 kilometers. Like a lot of small towns, the local citizens of Los Reyes come down to the station to witness the arrival of the train, since there's not much else to do. We noticed they had puzzled looks on their faces when they observed as the only detraining passengers a couple of "norteamericanos". I'm pretty sure it was the the hamburger I had the previous night in Ocotlan, but, regardless, I came down with a case of "Montezuma's Revenge" on this portion of the trip. Steve went by bus to Lazaro Cardenas and rode the train out of there, while I bussed up to Irapuato to find a nice hotel room with a comfortable toilet to recuperate for a couple of days.