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Charlie we visited family in south Texas in 1986, and one day we crossed over into Matamoros. The NdeM passenger station wasn’t that far over the border. I remember several things about it. One was that a steam engine water column was still in place at the end of the station platform, leaking like crazy. Another was a long line of heavyweight passenger equipment still in service. And some lower end wood passenger cars that weren’t much of an improvement over stock cars. The whole scene reeked of still being in the steam era. The station itself seemed in pretty good condition and still in use.
I recently looked at the station on Google Earth. It was a shocker. The whole area looks like a war zone now. The station was empty, all windows broken, completely vandalized, covered with grafitti. Times have completely changed . I don’t think I’d do that casual short walk over the border and back again. Freight is surely still interchanged over the river, but I wonder what kind of security is involved now, whose crew crosses the border, etc. It has got to be dangerous to work that interchange now.
