/travel/canada/Morbid Delays
The Via Rail train #60 from Toronto to Montreal is stopped. The view from my window hasn't changed for nearly two hours, and it will apparently be another 45 minutes before we're on our way.
Just after Brockville, I was roused from my sleepy reading to the train slowing, then to the smells of overheated engines. I cursed, remembering the time a bad engine made us creep into Ottawa, past whizzing cars and busses, at about 8km/h.
A minute or two passed before one of the train's flight attendants announced that she didn't know why we were stopped, but that she'd keep us apprised. A few minutes later, she kept her promise, vaguely mentioning a railway accident "ahead of us", and that the engineers would need to be relieved. It was all very underspecified, but it was going to take between two and three hours to get things sorted out.
I kept reading for a while, and then eventually started walking the length of the train, heading backwards first. When I reached the back, the vagueness became clear -- about 300m back, there was a crossing, with a couple of cars and some pilons. A few others gathered around the window filled me in on the rumour mill: we'd hit someone, maybe two, it might have been a child, they threw themselves in front of the train, that red car has been there since before anyone else got there. Why were we waiting at all; they're already dead? Why would someone do that? Why does it take so long to get going again? I put in my two cents -- procedures, trauma to the engineers, waiting for the coroner, and replacement conductors. Most people seemed pretty understanding about the whole thing. Some lamented that they continued to charge for the coffee and tea. The capitalist in me knew that was the best way to distribute what was no doubt an inadequate supply, though it did seem rather cutthroat.
I paced my way through to the front of the train, squeezing by the emptying snack carts, chatting with people as I passed. Each car seemed to have a different personality. Some had people up, standing, chatting, others had a good few glasses of wine going around. Several were quiet, some had children playing games, or irritating their impatient parents.
In the stuffy section between two cars, a fellow from Toronto had his guitar, and was strumming away quietly. He had gelled up hair, and a guitar that was well-worn, with a bit of stuff stuck to the body. Marshmallows from a recent campfire singalong, he explained without sheepishness. Just a part of his guitar's character. I encouraged him to play for one of the cars, but he declined. A young man whose seat was across the aisle from mine came into the compartment. The guitarist asked him if he knew how to sing, and the young, freckled, fluently bilingual Quebecker suggested "You Are My Sunshine," and upped the ante: He wanted to sing it to his girlfriend. Strike that, fianceé; not being romantic, he'd proposed to her last year, in a parking lot. The musician said that this was "the good stuff", true love, and all that, in that mellow, sincere way only an artist can.
I went and sat back down, to the last dregs of work that needed to be done before my vacation can begin in ernest. A few minutes later, the freckled Quebecker surreptitiously handed me his camera, and asked me to take a few photos. He and the guitarist returned a couple minutes later, and I ducked behind to take some photos. The car joined in a little, with a few claps, but not as much as I sorta hoped.
After this interlude, I started pacing back and forth, visiting the back of the train. Eventually, the morbid interest got the best of me: I had been refusing to take photos, but when some police officers were walking back towards the accident, I used it as an excuse to take a photo of the scene.
It's physically the closest I've ever been to death, and no doubt it was a fairly gruesome one as these things go. There were certainly a lot of disrupted plans, my own included, but perspective must be maintained on those lives were interrupted, or halted, far more than ours: the conductors, the victim, and their friends and family.
We're moving again now, full tilt toward Cornwall.
