National Railroad of Mexico

The National Railroad of Mexico (Ferrocarril Nacional de México) was one of the primary pre-nationalization railways of Mexico. Incorporated in Colorado in 1880 as the Mexican National Railway (Ferrocarril Nacional Mexicano), and headed by General William Jackson Palmer of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway, it completed a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge main line from Mexico City to Nuevo Laredo in September 1888 after an 1887 reorganization as the Mexican National Railroad. At its north end, the Texas Mexican Railway, owned since 1883, ran east from Laredo to the Gulf of Mexico at Corpus Christi; a second Gulf connection was completed in 1905 through a branch from Monterrey to Matamoros. Other branches included a cut-off from Mexico City through Querétaro to Celaya and an incomplete Pacific extension from Acámbaro to Uruapan. (Another piece of the latter, from Colima to Manzanillo, remained with the Mexican National Construction Company, and was acquired by the Mexican Central Railway in 1905.) In 1886 the railway commissioned Abel Briquet to take a series of photographs, which provide documentation of the railways at that time.