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British Columbia
Railway 1996 |
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| BRITISH COLUMBIA |
A train full of bleary-eyed passengers rumbles out of BCR's little station in North Vancouver and squeezes between long lines of freight waggons. It is very early on a spring morning, and we pass North Vancouver joggers, North Vancouver elderly dog walkers, North Vancouver commuters clutching coffee mugs as they wait for a bus... A cruise ship gleams on the south side of the river. Empty grain ships expose their great red flanks as they wallow in English Bay. The
railcar makes the first of many dozens of hoots as it rattles behind
the back yards of expensive North Vancouver homes, in which professional
people eat expensive breakfasts. We nibble our BCR breakfast, which
isn't too bad actually (the food on this trip, air-travel style,
is quite good, and they manage to cater for my vegetarianism too). We rattle past the back gardens of houses that once spread onto the abandoned tracks when the railway went through a period of doldrums. The residents were most peeved when it was decided to reclaim the land and relay the track! A long curve as we turn northwards. Now to the west there are the fjords and islands of the west coast, the water dotted with ferries and fishing boats, with barges piled high with timber and great hulk-like vessels, towed by diminutive tugs, that transport timber chips to the chipboard factories and pulp mills. The danger from these barges is that when the tug stops the barges don't, and several tugs have been run down and sunk by their tows.
(I'm still writing this..ho hum)
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