Guatemala City. If you find yourself in Guatemala City and have an hour or so, consider a different kind of museum. No, this isn’t the Popuh Vuh Mayan collection nor is it the arts and fabric archives at the University of San Carlos. What has eighteen wheels and once went chugging down the tracks amidst coffee and banana plantations? Correct…the Museo del Ferrocarril, otherwise known as the Railroad Museum.
Zone One, in the heart of Guatemala City, has the Presidental Palace, the Cathedral and serious streetside vendors. The architecture is mainly Art Deco and the traffic isn’t that bad. The one-way streets are confusing but if you have a taxi, he’ll know where to find the museum.
Located in a brick red long building on the southwest corner of Tenth Avenida and 18th Calle, look for the open air market in front. For twenty quetzals ($2.40) parking is available in back, after the policeman pulls back the orange cones. If you’re traveling with children, this is a good place to keep them interested: there are exhibits they can touch and railroad coaches to walk through. You’ll see Gautemalan families with their children and there’s even a Domino’s Pizza shop for post-train snacks.
Several locomotives are lined up, as if ready to leave: outside, without the cover of the roof are more, some scavenged for parts, all rusting in the sun. These are remnants from the age of steam, when taking a train ride was an adventure. Peer through the window of the only sleeping car still in one piece: the table is set with white china and the two beds are open, as if waiting for night to fall and the rhythm of the rails to lull one to sleep.
Rusty and once-yellow cabooses snooze in the sun and the steps are inviting: the interior is dusty, as are the baggage cars. The station signs from a dozen main depots lean against the walls and the blackboards show the times and the routes on what once was a busy network of trains from Guatemala City to the humid port of Barrios or the slightly lesser but still steamy Pacific coast.
Guatemala, unlike Mexico, wasn’t in the train business until the early 1900’s and even then, it was marked by starts that quickly become stops. Politics, the lure of money and foreign intervention all played a part in an industry that never quite kept going. The coffee farmers in the highlands wanted a faster way of shipping other than mules and carts. Bananas and other fruit exports were sensitive to time and temperature: if Guatemala were ever to compete in the international markets, trains were the only solution. Experienced and wealthy US investors were lured with the promises of lucrative concessions, only to be outdone and finessed by European consortiums. In 1902 the first line built was the link from the city to the Caribbean coast, which would allow the fragile fruit and coffee to ship directly to the Florida and the East Coast. A line of track was next laid along the Pacific side, allowing the shipping to go north to San Francisco or through Mexico. For whatever reason, Guatemala’s tracks were narrow gauge, which didn’t fit on the Mexican railways. When the trains reached the border, the goods either had to be transshipped or the trucks (sets of wheels) changed. United Fruit, synonymous with banana republics, stepped in sometime in the 1930’s. Their Honduras headquarters in Tela decided that having another railroad in an adjoining country might offset the political changes swirling through Central America: It bought them another twenty years of time before politics, greed and natural disasters closed the railroads, for once and for all. Today, the remnants of those days of slowly chugging steam-driven locomotives are waiting in a bright and clean museum. The entrance fee? 24 cents…a bargain and a step back in time.
Pictures: Michael Sherer
