Those were fun days in Guatemala. The DRGW ng. had abandoned, Bob Richardson somehow got me interested in the IRCA, and one thing led to another. The IRCA, the nationalized Ferrocarriles de Guatemala by the time I got there, was an interesting railroad, and didn't worry about little things like liability. I remember on one of our charters discussing the next photo stop with the Hermenio Salguero, the jefe de trenes, in the baggage car of our mixto. He said let's go up and talk to the engine crew. So it was out the end door, up the ladder to the roof of the rear boxcar, walk along the bouncing roof walk, leap through space between the moving cars, and.....then we came to the tender and I froze as Hermenio gracefully lept not only across the bottomless abyss, but down three feet to the top of the tender covered with a slippery coating of fuel oil. What to do. Well, this norteamericano didn't want to look like a pollo....so I jumped. Well, the good news is I'm still here to tell the story.

JBWX