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Of Steam Trains and Zombies By Mark Burgess

Sat, 12/05/2009 - 15:27 — webmaster

The following appeared in the October 21-27, 2009 edition of the Low Down to Hull and Back News.  It may also be found at www.lowdownonline.com

In Wakefield, in the summertime, zombies walk the streets. I may be new in town but I have a privileged view of their arrival. From my window I watch them disembark once, twice a day, their cameras flashing, their hands clapping against a background of steam and whistles and burning oil that creep through my screen as their engine is spun for its return voyage.  I watch them branch out across the town in large, amorphous blobs, seeking brains or ice cream or some personalized version of provincial charm, making sidewalks impassable as they go. They walk by my office and indiscreetly peak through the windows, their hands cupped around their eyes like zombie binoculars, pressed up against the glass. We try to look busy and, not finding what they're looking for, they go along their way to the next stop. Sometimes they ask if there are any restaurants in this village; sometimes they're led by energetic, overalled young people who don't seem like zombies at all.          Because I only started at the paper in May, it's tough to imagine Wakefield without the steam train. And as a newcomer, its passengers provide the perfect foil against which to define my own immersion. In The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway only felt like he belonged in West Egg after offering directions to a stranger; similarly, I found I could feel like a local by rolling my eyes knowingly about the zombies.           But the steam train has nearly run its last route until May, with only an Oct. 25 brunch trip separating the village from six whistle-free months, and me from just being a conspicuous outsider. Village Poet Phil Cohen described his experience riding the train as similar to watching one's homeland from an airplane, seeing it again with fresh eyes. A similar impulse propelled me to brave the zombies on the HCW Steam Train's penultimate weekend.          When I called to ask for a ride, owner André Groulx was relaxed and chatty, which wasn't the case in interactions with the Low Down earlier in the season. For this he can be forgiven. In its first two months back in service, Groulx's train suffered an opening-weekend derailment, a night time electrical failure and evacuation, and a collision at a road crossing. It was the latter that saw him at wit's end, when reporters were at the scene of the accident before he was.           “It's unbelievable. It boggled the mind,” he said of hanging up the phone after being informed of the accident by his conductor and immediately receiving a call from the Low Down, which led him to cry conspiracy.          “We're just getting over the last (incident) and there's something new,” he said. “I'm on one phone dealing with police, emergency services. On the other it's the media.”           The HCW Steam Train's return to service from the May 2008 landslide that sidelined it for the entire 2008 season may have seemed like an endless procession of baby-steps, but the final push was executed in hyper-speed by Groulx and his team. The money, $5.8 million from three levels of government, came on March 9, leaving only a couple of months before opening weekend. In addition to the work demanded by a year of neglect – rehabilitation to bridges and crossings, cutting brush, rehiring and training nearly 80 staff members – the line was plagued by an April 1 landslide that must have seemed like a cruel joke.           “It was already a question of a countdown. You know, March 9 and we're opening May 9, and obviously the equipment hadn't run for a year so there was all the testing.”          Groulx and company made it through the opening jitters and bumps and are preparing to mark the end of a season that exceeded expectations, registering 46,350 passengers. The train's best year was 2007, when 55,000 passengers rode it, but Groulx said the average over several years before that was 50,000. Without the normal preparation time to work up reservations and distribute brochures, he said he would have been happy with 35,000-40,000 travellers in the train's first year back. He's “ecstatic” with the number he got.          The train is so popular, in fact, that he couldn't guarantee me a seat. I get lucky when I show up anyway, benefiting from a cancellation and squeezing into the Gatineau car. I'm seated with a perfectly charming elderly zombie couple, John and Adele.          “The gentleman I'm with is deaf and German so you'll have to be speak loudly and slowly if you want him to hear you,” Adele tells me before John joins us. Adele is stern but likeable and is certainly altogether. She gives the impression of having never once been anybody's fool in her life, and of not having suffered very many either. When our car's guide, Claude Laviolette, equipped with overalls and headset, starts explaining the journey ahead, Adele says, “I suppose he feels he has to talk all the way there and back.” These zombies aren't so lifeless after all.  

 

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