The Connected Cities - Chaintry and Agate

 

 

 

Perhaps the world’s greatest engineering achievement is the railway line between Chaintry and Agate. These cities lie hundreds of miles apart across a vast near empty desert. Though, of course, the only people who actually think that deserts are empty are those who have never visited them. All the deserts I ever saw were packed, children herding goats, botanists climbing joshua trees, lost pilgrims and festival goers.

Building a railway line is a combination of brute force and precision. There is brute force in arranging all the aggregate and hardcore, digging the cuttings, building up the embankments. There is precision in surveying, it is no easy thing to layout a railway line, you have to survey vast swathes of land, measuring spot height after spot height, plotting contours across the sway and ebb of the landscape. Once the surveyor has walked the land, the geologist comes with his hammer, and a navvy with a spade. They work out where there is heavy soil, like clay and where is light soil, like sand, they work out how close to the surface the bedrock lies and what it consists of.

With the surveyor’s theodolite and geologist’s hammer laid aside, it is the turn of the draughtsman to translate all those endless notebooks filled with columns of figures into charts, stretching out across the table, put flat into plan chest, or curled into tubes. And even then, someone else comes by, with a slide rule and tables of figures, working out whether it would cost more to curve around or to just cut through, whether to bridge a gap or skirt a lake.

But for the line between Chaintry and Agate there was little to consider. The desert offered few features, the route was as straight and as flat as the surveyors could hope for. And the straighter the route, the faster the trains could go. Engineers from across the known world worked on the project, there had never been a straighter or a flatter route. Trains were designed specifically for the route, long trains, that would shoot like pencils along the slot in a schoolchild’s desk. These were the sleekest, most beautiful trains that you ever saw, polished metal in a silvery yellow, trains that shone like a fresh star.

For a while the beautiful trains were packed with visitors, their huge hats wrapped in silk scarves, laughing porters carrying on crates of exotic fruits, children crammed around the windows, watching the distant mountains shift imperceptibly and the nearby goatherds shoot by like rockets. Each station was decorated with colourful blimps hung with huge long silken banners in primary colours. Orchestras would greet each arriving train, photographers would crowd round each leaving one.

But after the engineering conference papers had been presented, after the councillors had all congratulated themselves, it no longer seemed quite so novel, or quite so amazing. It soon began to seem commonplace to zip across the salt flats and mesas, past cacti as the lizards flicked their tongues and watched. In truth there was very little reason for anyone to travel between the cities of Agate and Chaintry, they were much of a muchness, they had nothing to trade, there was nothing to see in the one, that was not in the other. The grocers of Agate might visit a solicitor in Chaintry, or a young bride in Chaintry might buy a wedding dress in Agate, but then again they might not.

And now, the train still runs, but not everyday, and not quite so fast, to run at super speeds you needed engineers checking the line each morning for any deviation or impediment, sweeping the line with a hair brush, pressing a head to the rail and with one eye closed, checking for miles of straightness.

I suppose that the people of Agate and Chaintry are a little embarrassed, they never asked for this marvel of engineering, they were happy enough without it, truth be told. And now the world looks askance at them. Engineers and politicians looks upon the citizens as unworthy of this great marvel, the miracle bestowed upon them. But the people of Agate and Chaintry never asked to live hundreds of years in the future, like all sensible people they were content enough to live in the present.