And Presently The Empty
Trains Would Depart, Reversing The Process Of Their Arrival, And Vanishing
Gradually Along A Line Which Appeared At Last To Turn Up Into The Air
And Run At A Tangent Into An Unreal World.
The life of the strange and lonely town was characterised by a
machine-like regularity, born perhaps of the iron road from which it
derived its nourishment.
Daily at three o'clock in the morning the
'camp-engine' started with the 'bank parties.' With the dawn the 'material'
train arrived, the platelaying gangs swarmed over it like clusters of
flies, and were carried to the extreme limit of the track. Every man knew
his task, and knew, too, that he would return to camp when it was finished,
and not before. Forthwith they set busily to work without the necessity of
an order. A hundred yards of material was unloaded. The sleepers were
arranged in a long succession. The rails were spiked to every alternate
sleeper, and then the great 80-ton engine moved cautiously forward along
the unballasted track, like an elephant trying a doubtful bridge.
The operation was repeated continually through the hours of the burning
day. Behind the train there followed other gangs of platelayers, who
completed the spiking and ballasting process; and when the sun sank
beneath the sands of the western horizon, and the engine pushed the empty
trucks and the weary men home to the Railhead camp, it came back over a
finished and permanent line.
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