The railroad system of Honduras began life as a collection of small narrow gauge rail systems built by American fruit companies to transport their produce to shipping points. Although the rail system that developed was built to further the profits of these companies it had the added benefit of providing a transportation network to the country at large. The political aspirations of the 'banana republic' countries of Latin America led to the railroads being nationalized.
The fruit companies put up a token fight to try and prevent this but by this time newly built roads and the trucking industry had already begun to prove more efficient. In essence, the governments of the day got a collection of 'white elephants'. Honduras did a remarkably good job of running their newly acquired rail system but the writing was on the wall and a decline was inevitable. Hurricane Mitch hammered the final nail in the coffin when it came ashore in 1998 destroying virtually every bridge and ruining hundreds of miles of rail bed. A couple of small sections continue to operate.

What follows is a collection of thoughts and images about one such section in the city of La Ceiba, on the North Coast of Honduras. Long before Hurricane Mitch many branch lines and sidings in the La Ceiba area had been abandoned as industry continued to rely more on trucking. After Mitch and apart from the tiny commuter line detailed in the photo essay there was only one industrial operation left; Re-cycled cardboard was collected and stored on flat cars in a warehouse in the La Ceiba yard and was delivered to a ship at the pier. The ship transported the cardboard to a plant in South America for processing. The pier was recently condemned ending the operation.

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