Good Grief! That's hard to take as it was pretty desolate once you left the outskirts of Escuintla. I remember one long siding on the hill, Medio Monte and among other things, it was used as a stop to cool the drivers of light helpers going back down the hill.
Last time I was there was in early '77 with 2-8-2 204 and 4 cars totalling 96 tons, about half the rating for that class. The Road Foreman, Jose Pineda, had the engineer give up his seat for me and I took the train all the way from Escuintla to the tank @ Palin. Saw no other trains on the way, only a few woodcutters walking along the side of the ROW on their way to work. Also got to run her from the wye at Santa Maria into Escuintla where we made good time along the hwy., even passing a couple of slow trucks. Once we got on the 3.3%, we slowed down quite a bit but still had an easy time of it. All long gone now.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2015 07:00PM by Tom Moungovan.