Train I Ride

I am watching a YouTube video of a train pulling a load of zinc ore on its 750 kilometer journey to the refinery in Townsville, about 100 kilometers north of where we live.

This is no 16-coaches-long-Elvis-Presley number. Think 70 or so wagons, think each one maybe fifteen meters long. The calculating part of the mind goes dizzy trying to work out the metrics of it — total weight carried, total length.

The side panel of YouTube offers me, as alternative, Opening The Coffin Of King Henry VIII, or 80 Incredible Moments Caught On Camera, or Windy Day At The Beach, or David Bowie’s Heroes. All Words In The Title In Capitals, all videos with no relevance to the train pushing on to the refinery.

I leave the train line a few minutes in & open the coffin of KHVIII. Or, more accurately, I am confronted with his six wives chronologically introduced, followed by Kings Charles I & II. Here there is no drone footage, just a commentator droning on. & it’s not the coffin about to be opened but the vault. & because the vault has already been opened to put the headless corpse of Charles I in alongside Henry VIII, plus, probably, opened before that to make sure there was room for a second coffin & opened after to ensure that all proprieties had been observed, the video is something of a anticlimax.

So I return to the zinc. & YouTube, offended by my lack of interest in early 16th century English history, offers up in the side panel Marvel & Star Wars comix — much of it fan-made but posing as the real thing — interspersed with short pieces about the Rugby World Cup.

Now I am offended. I prefer the real thing — if ‘real thing’ is an appropriate term to describe something that is patently not real; & 80-second shorts reveal nothing of the 80-minute struggle that often characterizes the game I’ve loved for nearly 80 years.

The train moves on, past travelers' rest areas & cattle stations, running parallel to the highway. My earlier thoughts catch up with me: the pedant in me rises to the surface; I open another browser window. Search for wagon dimensions: 15.5 meters. 71 wagons comes in at roughy 1.1 kilometers. Plus the two engines. Carrying load per wagon: 72 tonnes. Total load of ore: 5110 tonnes.

Now we’re moving through Calcium — Yes, Virginia, there is a place called Calcium, & guess what they mined there. Time for an interlude. Heroes is again in the side panel, this time a version by King Crimson, also shot live in Berlin like Bowie’s was. & another continuity — the guitarist is Robert Fripp, who played an integral part in the original Bowie recording.

Back to the train for its last minute / forty kilometers to reach Townsville. Maybe it’s the impending presence of a city, but the sidebar fills up with AI-generated jailbait. I switch to full screen, uncomfortable with such companions. & as a convoy of cars towing caravans passes over a bridge while the train passes beneath it, & the beginning of the built-up area draws closer, I close off with my own rendition of Heroes, dipping my toe into those waters where the dolphins swim.