The daily "pasajero" from Puerto Barrios to Guatemala City pauses for lunch at Zacapa. This was once an express train complete with parlor car service, and the lunch room at the Hotel Ferrocarril was intended to feed a first class clientele. But by the late 60's the train ran as a mixto, and the lunch room was no longer busy. Zacapa was the junction of the branch to El Salvador, and you could spend the night at the hotel and catch the train to San Salvador in the morning. The upstairs veranda of the hotel overlooked the yard and roundhouse, and one wag described staying at the hotel as like spending the night in a railroad yard office. It was great fun if you were a railfan. The GE locomotive is still lettered for the FIdeCA (IRCA) which had been nationalized as the Ferrocarriles de Guatemala (Fegua) at the end of 1968. In the distance if you look carefully you can see smoke and a steam engine, either the yard switcher or a following freight entering the yard. Most trains on Fegua were steam powered in 1970. Although the IRCA had been almost fully dieselized at one time, it ran out of cash to buy imported parts for the diesels, and returned once stored steam engines to service.
