I certainly remember my first trip on the Guastatoya. It was March 1971, and Central American Rail Tours was doing our third steam charter on Fegua. After a trip from Mexico City using the regular Pullman to Tapachula, and chartered trains from Tecun Uman to Guatemala City, I ended up in bed at our Guatemala City hotel with the flu. I told George to take the group on and I would catch up with them in San Salvador. So George and the group departed the hotel and I tried to get some rest. A few minutes later the phone rang and George told me that the railroad had substituted the Guastatoya for the coach on our chartered mixed train. Wow. At that point adrenaline took command and I told him to hold the train, I'd be there as soon as a taxi could get me to the station. I made it to the train and laid down in one of the beds on the car and slept most of the morning. But by afternoon I was out taking pictures. We spent that night at the Hotel Ferrocarril at Zacapa, and the next day our special ran up the Ipala Loops to the Salvador border, where we were met by an IRCA train that took us to Santa Ana. If it hadn't been for the Guastatoya I would have missed a neat trip.
Here's some trivia. Some folks, maybe some trolley history folks, might notice that the Guastatoya has the same paint scheme as was once on bus (and probably steet cars) in Washington,D.C. Around 1960 O. Roy Chalk who controlled Transportation Corporation of America acquired a controlling interest in the IRCA. TCA also owned Capitol Transit (as well as Trans Carribean Airways). In the process the passenger cars on IRCA started to get painted in the same livery as the Capital Transit equipment, and the Guastatoya still had that scheme when I saw it several weeks ago in the Guatemala City museum.
