I love trains. Rick can take or leave them, literally. So I visited the Museo Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Mexicanos in Puebla on my own. Don’t let the name fool you—this is no dusty warehouse of parts and junked train cars. It’s a sprawling, open-air ode to an era when getting from Mexico City to Veracruz meant danger, daring, and super uncomfortable wooden bench seats.
The museum sits on the grounds of Puebla’s former rail station, a legit hub back when trains were how you moved goods, people, telegraphs, livestock, nuns, barrels of pulque, and probably at least one Mexican hobo. The tracks are still there, and trains. Dozens of them. Steam engines, diesel engines, luxury sleepers, freight cars, baggage cars, presidential coaches. You can walk right up to most of them and even climb into a few. One had a stove, another had a bar. One had a rusty ladder that probably voids modern liability policies—but you know what?
Worth it.
While the museum is technically a national museum, its focus is the Mexico City–Veracruz line—the golden child of Mexico’s 19th-century industrial ambition. This wasn’t just a railway. It was a manifesto in metal, a declaration to the world that Mexico could be modern, damnit, even if it had to blast through mountains. To be fair, Britain footed most of the bill in the end. And handled most of the engineering support. Oh, let’s just be honest—they also brought wrought iron bridges, trains with names like The Conqueror, and the smug confidence of men who insisted on tea service in the jungle. But, hey, it was still Mexican!
The route linked the nation’s inland capital to the port of Veracruz, seemingly ignoring mountains, ravines, and not a few laws of physics. Puebla was the logical midpoint—high, central, and already busy exporting textiles, goods, and so much religious fervor. The terrain made it a logistical headache. The politics made it a logistical headache wrapped tight in red tape. But somehow, the whole thing still ran on time.
Enter the Metlac Bridge: part engineering, part dare. You don’t need to know the specs—although for the record, it’s 102 meters long, 78 meters high, and built mostly of British steel and Mexican resolve. What matters is that this spindly iron spiderweb hangs over a canyon so deep and steep that, when you see it in old photos, you genuinely wonder what kind of nerves it took to ride over it in a wood-paneled train car with no seatbelts or refund policy.
There’s an entire gallery wall and a diorama devoted to the bridge and its surrounding terrain—the hairpin turns, the horseshoe curve, the sheer logistical hubris of building anything there, let alone a railway. If you’ve ever wanted to feel like railroading was less about schedules and more about conquering nature, you’re in the right place.
The exhibits throughout the museum are bilingual. Mostly. The signage is helpful. Mostly. But honestly, the best parts are unspoken. Like the way the trains are left to age in place—not neglected, exactly, but also not buffed and polished to a Disney shine. There’s history in the peeling paint, in the scorched coal boxes, in the creak of the floorboards when you climb aboard. There’s one car that still smells like oil and leather. Another’s been turned into a classroom—a reminder that this place isn’t just for nostalgia. It's also for school kids learning what a telegraph was before Wi-Fi made attention spans purely hypothetical.
And it’s all very photogenic. Not in the influencer sense (though, you know, knock yourself out), but in the “rusted metal and dramatic shadows” way. The textures here beg for black-and-white film and moody overcast skies. Or just your phone and a willingness to crouch dramatically near the undercarriage like you’re scouting for bandits.
You can easily spend a couple of hours wandering through it all. Longer if you bring a train nerd. Longer still if you are one. So if you’re in Puebla and your feet are sore from too many churches, or you just need a break from mole and Talavera, this place is a brilliant left turn. It’s history you can touch. It’s industry you can feel. And it’s proof that sometimes, the best stories don’t move fast—they rumble in slowly, smoke billowing, whistle screaming, and steel screeching.
Just watch out on that ladder.
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