With a green light from the Chapala city council last week, plans to put an old caboose on permanent display outside the former railway station are now on course.
The tail-end railroad car is being donated to Chapala by the national railroad company Ferrocarriles de Mexico, thanks to railroad history enthusiast Juan Diego Castro.
The vintage caboose, manufactured in the 1940’s, is currently sitting in Guadalajara’s railroad yard, showing years of wear and tear and recent graffiti defacement. The cost for its restoration and transport to Chapala is estimated to run at around 150,000 pesos.
The vehicle’s placement adjacent to the sidewalk just south of the entrance to the Centro Cultural Gonzalez Gallo was determined by recommendation of the Jalisco Culture Ministry to coincide with the location of the station’s original iron tracks.
To move the project forward, the council voted unanimously to approve the remove a median strip planter from the middle of the street so that the caboose display won’t interfere with traffic flow.