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The story
The beginnings of rail transport in Mexico date back to the concessions granted by Maximilian I of Mexico, mostly to foreign companies, and continued by Benito Juárez.
In 1898, José Yves Limantour proposed a system of concessions of the railway companies on the future lines to be built from 1900. That same year the Secretariat of the Treasury promulgated the first General Railway Law. This law established a system whereby concessions would be granted to companies to lay railway lines only when they satisfied the economic needs of the country and linked the interior of the Republic with its most important commercial ports.
The N de M company was created in 1903 during the tenure of Porfirio Díaz, and it was through said company that most of the Mexican railway network was developed. In fact, before the Porfiriato, only the Mexico City–Veracruz segment was in operation, since Gen. Díaz's greatest interest was to develop the country industrially, he had a special affinity for the railroad.
Pursuant to an agreement signed on February 29, 1908, N de M absorbed the Mexican Central Railroad (Ferrocarril Central Mexicano, first section from Mexico City to León, Guanajuato, opened in 1882) in 1909, thus acquiring a second border gateway at Ciudad Juárez (adjacent to El Paso, Texas). This gave the Mexican federal government a 58% stake in N de M. The N de M was fully nationalized by President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río in 1938, and privatized in 1994–98 by Presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Ernesto Zedillo. Until 1987, N de M operated most railway trackage through the central and northeastern regions of the country. The Ferrocarril del Pacífico (or Pacific Railroad) and the Ferrocarril Chihuahua al Pacífico operated railroads in the northwest.
In 1987, President Miguel de la Madrid merged the N de M and the country's five existing regional rail operators into the wider Ferronales (FMN) parastatal organization.
In 1995, due to FNM's serious financial difficulties, the Mexican government announced that FNM would be privatized and divided into four main systems. As part of the restructuring for privatization, FNM suspended passenger rail service in 1997, and the new arrangements applied from 1998; by then FNM ceased to be the operator and administrator of most of its major railway routes. The companies were Kansas City Southern de Mexico, Ferromex, Ferrosur, and (owned jointly by the three companies) Ferrocarril y Terminal del Valle de México or Ferrovalle which operates railroads and terminals in and around Mexico City.
It was not until June 4, 2001, during Vicente Fox's presidency that FNM as an organization was officially extinguished, as confirmed by a publication in Mexican Official's Gazette. FNM will continue to exist legally as a state-owned shell entity under liquidation (as Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México en Liquidación) until the conclusion of the liquidation process.
As of 2026, FNM en Liquidación still owns some lines (23% of which are shortline railroads) where concessions cannot be granted or are considered to be of importance for the national economy, such as the Trans-Istmico, which goes from Salina Cruz, Oaxaca to Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, although their direct operations are through Ferrocarril del Istmo de Tehuantepec. Since 2012, FNM en Liquidación as well as its associated liquidation process and settlement of existing liabilities has been headed by an undersecretariat of the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT).
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Locomotives
During the days of steam locomotives, N de M was best known for operating Niágara class locomotives, which took their name from the New York Central Railroad locomotives of the same wheel configuration. It was also the home of several 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge systems that used steam, both nationally and regionally. N de M was one of the few railroads outside the US to purchase new diesel locomotives from Baldwin Locomotive Works: the only three "Baldwin E-units" ever built (DR-6-4-2000), the DR-12-8-1500/2 and the AS-616. Two of the three DR-6-4-2000 locomotives had been on major railroads in the United States on a demonstration tour in 1945. N de M bought them in August 1945 and ordered a third in August 1946. All three consistently broke down and were retired soon after their factory warranties expired and were scrapped in September 1957. They do not appear on the 1958 N de M locomotive roster, and sat for years in the scrapyard at San Luis Potosí. Notes in the FNM archives in Puebla, Mexico describe how one of these locomotives had a wheel disintegrate at high speed, and also how the Centipede locomotives were delivered in 1948 with parts missing.
In Acámbaro, Guanajuato, N de M operated one of the few facilities in Latin America that was capable of constructing and doing complete rebuilds of steam locomotives, thus with rare exceptions (as with the Niagaras), most of N de M steam motive power was purchased used and rebuilt there. Portions of the facility and a preserved 2-8-0 steam locomotive remain as part of Acambaro's municipal railway museum.
From Wikipedia’s article on Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3