Wheel swaps
I would take the train, but it has already left the station. The story of my life, I’m afraid. In an affont to logic, my fascination with disappeared rail systems continues to grow.
On the Island, my family lived beside the railway. Occupational hazard, since my father worked for them. I was too young to travel, much, but the arrivals and departures from the station kept me enthralled. If only I’d known the destiny of the rails, I’d have found reason to ride.
Anyhow, I did my best to get aboard during the decade where my studies and my parents lay distant, one from the other. Never bothered me to put my life on hold for a couple of days. Yes, there were airplanes, and no, I couldn’t afford to fly. By then, the Island was already a bus-only branch…
Fast forward, and I’ve developed a new interest in the rail system on the other island; the Rock. They went through the same boom to bust cycle, in the same time period; the only difference was one of scale (and not gauge; that’s another subject). There’s a whole library of material to watch, and today I learned where the wheels would be swapped (that’s the gauge question). Every boxcar transiting from the mainland would get a new set of “trucks” in the sheds at Port-aux-Basques. Labour intensive, but the only way to get things done… unless you wanted to repack the contents of every single load of freight, and that was too much.
I’m going to keep reading and watching, the better to demystify.
