Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 10: Roads for Rails - the Newfoundland Railway

Episode Date: December 18, 2019

Today @aliceavizandum, @oldmananders0n, and @donoteat1 are joined by @seanrade to examine the closure of Newfoundland's railway, why it was completely unjustified, and what may come in the future. Also we mispronounce words. Here's the link to the slides: https://youtu.be/lMcriPJKPdI Listen to trashfuture: https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/ Here's the Patreon link so you can watch the Groverhaus episode: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod

Hello, and welcome to episode What episode number with this eight buddy? Jesus Depending on what stuff comes out 22nd not even yeah, we have seven up, but I welcome to another episode of well There's your problem. There you go Episode question mark question mark question mark a podcast about engineering disasters, which is in and of itself a disaster as well We're hitting some home run

On task as always I'm Justin Rosniak. I'm the person you're listening to I have a YouTube channel called do not eat where I talk about cities and socialism But I also have this podcast or this is shared equally between the three of us My pronouns are he him and oh are we doing are we doing? Acknowledgements of land. Yeah, I think so just to annoy me even more Exactly, we're I'm podcasting from Lenape territory Lenny Lenape territory, which may or may not have been stolen We don't know because all copies of the Treaty of Shaka Maxon were destroyed by William Penn's descendants

So they could justify stealing more land elsewhere Hopefully unsuspicious I'm Alice called Rock Ellie. I am on a podcast called trash future as well as this My pronouns are she and her and I'm recording this from Glasgow, Scotland So as far as this being stolen land probably like in the process of enclosure or like clearances it was stolen by somebody from somebody but Not a distinct indigenous group. I Guess I'll go next William Anderson

Pronouns are he him It's him on the Lenape. I'd actually like to point out that the Philly History Museum Claims that a wampum belt in their possession serves as proof that such a meeting did take place for the treaty However, they hate they don't nothing else beyond that. So it's just I think it'd be funny if the line of the treaty like went Straight through the house so that like your side of the house were stolen, but mine was bought fair and square This this podcast is one quarter recorded on stolen land Well, you could have whatever the spilled beer on my floor back, I guess

Taking all of this incredibly rich land and we've used it for such great purposes as spilling beer on it I'm sure it's somewhere in the deep deep recesses of my closet. There's still a Tinip dip from like two years ago. So enjoy that and and today and today we have a special guest Sean tell the nice people about yourself. Hi, I'm Sean Burton pronouns. He him. I live in cornerbrook, Newfoundland and Labrador I'm a substitute teacher up here right now And I guess if we're doing the land acknowledgement Presumably this was Nygma land there may have been Biothic living here some time ago, but hard to tell because the colonialists killed them all

Yeah, not very nice Yeah, Twitter handle is Sean read with the Communist Party of Canada So I mostly retweet their stuff do a bit of organizing up here. Awesome Today we're gonna talk about you know a place not a lot of us has been except for three of the four people on this podcast Appealing to a niche audience here, I know right so not a lot of people know this But if you get in your car and you drive north on I-95 you can go past Boston and you wind up in this place called Maine, right? This is a speed-running trick, right? You clip through the level and you arrive in the main stage Yes, yes, exactly. If you keep going up 95 you get to this place called banger. I hardly knew her

Do we not have a photo of the Paul Budgen statue? Then you take this road called the Maine airline This is where you clip through the level to a place called Calais and then you cross the border into this place called New Brunswick Oh, why would you though? They pronounce a Calais not Calais that's annoying like that's stealing valor from the French Port just this is this is the rule with Canada that I'm discovering as we do more of this can-con is that everything in Canada That's French is pronounced wrong. Yeah, oh what you should oh you should hear the place names in Newfoundland. They'll drive you bonkers And if you keep going you go to Nova Scotia

You get to Cape Breton Island in a place called North Sydney and if you get on a boat up there You'll cross the Cabot Strait and wind up on an island called Newfoundland And if you keep going you wind up in a place called St. John's now once you didn't have to drive this whole way You could take a train and that's the subject to today's episode the the Newfoundland Railway and its closure and This was I Guess more relevant a couple weeks ago But the Tories in the UK made news recently with their promise to undo the beaching axe, right? Yes, Dr. Beaching

destroyed most of the like Unprofitable or not profitable enough local railway services that people actually, you know kind of needed So like villages that had like one railway Train go through like a day all of those lines were just destroyed entirely in the 60s It wasn't ideal. No, but and and of course the Tories aren't very serious about this because they're only budgeting 500 million pounds Both labor, I mean like some fucking electrification would be nice maybe and some like in the north or in Wales Is there any electrification now in the UK?

Oh Yes, but like as with all good things about this country if there is something good it exists in Southeast, England So like we have high-speed rail that's Going to like intended to go up to the so-called northern powerhouse that and that's gonna be electrified and Yeah, that's gonna take Forever and it's gonna be shit and it's it you have this wild thing where you end up with just Awful trains going out of London and then the very nice shiny expensive ones that go towards London is

I don't know. Maybe more efficient to run in both ways, but what do I know? You have a high-speed rail that only gets you out of Britain entirely. Yes literally, yes But there have been many beaching axes in many countries and places around the world And I'm sure through the course of this podcast we'll talk about many of them But today we're gonna talk about roads for rails and the closure of the Newfoundland Railroad Beaching Canada edition. Oh, yeah, I mean they're constantly closing via rail lines, but thanks for that Justin Trudeau I'm surprised that they reopened the line to Churchill. Are you aware of that one Justin?

I am aware of the Churchill line. That one's cool. Yeah, we can go see some polar bears Yeah, the you probably heard that that line washed out Year two ago. I don't know. It was horribly maintained anyway by the company that bought it out And it was a hell of an ordeal to convince the federal government to come in and do the necessary repairs I'm just shocked. They actually did it's only because there's no other road up there Also, if they keep if they keep extracting oil at Alberta Churchill will be a nice free port Yeah, they haven't really again that poor says kind of all the way around the top Oh

All right, so Every every piece of evidence that suggests that we're gonna get better at this with practice We just overwhelm with the force of our incompetence. Yes I find endearing so Tell me about the trains I'm gonna tell you about the trains hurry up. All right so Okay, so the Newfoundland Railway was a three-foot six-inch narrow gauge railway it had a

549 mile main line From Porta Basque to st. John or rather st. John was mile zero. So I went to Porta Basque 549 miles across an island in this tiny Like incredibly narrow railroad. I promise you driving across it is worse. Oh, I'm sure I'm certain because Train goods and car bad Just that this seems like a very small train I don't want to like stick my arms out the side and lose a forearm to a telegraph pole. Well, I mean it was

Well proportional, I mean, I don't know how deep we were how deeply we're gonna get into the history here, but When it was originally conceived the survey in 1875 they did recommend a nice standard gauge line that was only going to be Something like 300 miles and it was going to terminate Not too far from where corner Brook is actually Which might have been a bit more doable, but anyway, they ended up building it Not just the narrow gauge, but with this really convoluted twisty steep curve Construction that some people compared to a roller coaster, which we see here. Yes. Yeah, fair enough

I mean, obviously the thing the thing that we want is the Elon Musk approach where we just like Drive an entirely straight tunnel all the way across Newfoundland Good luck you fuckers They couldn't even build a damn highway, right? Oh I enjoyed your curvy twisty highway in the middle of fucking nowhere. Oh Jesus we'll get to that though now that we're not in the country anymore can confirm that my GTI hit VMAX in on your beautiful island Please don't prosecute me Canada That was the one nice thing about the island though is that there were no cops the one nice thing you loved it

Well, I know there are many many nice things shit Horrible guest I do want to say though that that week you were here I know the weather was shit, but I would sure was usually summers are pretty good I don't know for some reason that first week of July was just a shit show. It was great to be 49 degrees In July, I just love the idea that there's no cops on Newfoundland Not because like they're underfunded or something But because they're like there was a land bridge that they could have crossed but Newfoundland separated and became an island too soon Just the cops became stranded on the on mainland Canada cops never evolved here

Fun and blonk-sa-blon They did just they just use a different name Now there was one passenger train that went all the way across the island that was called the caribou it ran on a 23 hour schedule and It was pretty heavily used in World War two when they were building a couple of air bases on the island Then the the soldiers using it called it the new fee bullet because it was It was very slow. It's very slow train You can see down here. I put I put a stamp here

Showing the train going very fast. Oh, look how cute it is. That's not actually what it looked like there was Actually one section of track that was actually a straight and level enough where they could get up to 90 kilometers an hour Wow Wow Yeah shocking so and then and and there were unique features on this line like it was when it was completed in 1898 as Sean said it did this kind of convoluted route. So I went through a place called Uh, what's it gaff top sail? Yeah, so that's

Right here, right and you can see this is what the snow was like She's up here. Yeah, so the original plan survey route Uh went considerably to the south of this location, but for some reason Uh, when the line got to central the The colonial government was like, no, let's just build it straight across this exposed high terrain. What could possibly go wrong? Uh, yeah in the days of steam. It was not unusual for trains to get stuck there for days Awesome fun stuff. Wow. We have this other part of the island, uh, where the train went down here

And this is called wreck house Now, why why is it called wreck house? Uh, it's a mispronunciation Of of the ancient french town of rakhi That's a good guess, but yeah, thank you. I just I just fucked it. It's quite literal here actually Yeah, it says actually because the wind would just wreck your house if you build one there As we can see by this steam locomotive on its side That's not a house just standing there and and the wind blew it over. Well, it weighs the same as the house the um, the sort of spiritual antecedents of our podcast of the guys in that photo just being like, well, there's your problem

Flip it over and get it back on the rails and everything Yeah, it was super tight to look for gas in wreck house in driving rain Oh Just that guy with his hands in his pockets being like, yeah, I see what's gone wrong here Just uh, just off the ferry at port of basque and it's like, oh, what have we gotten ourselves into? Yeah, I was pretty fucking certain we were gonna die It's it's usually pretty down there. It it was very pretty even in the fog But it was all it was pretty in like, you know a deadly way the way silent hill can be pretty. Yeah

Yeah And I put a I put a picture of the the rail yard in in port of basque up here During like the heyday. Hmm. Look at all the sea entrance. Are we saying here that? That newfoundland is a survival horror island. Maybe that's more true and more isn't one It's just situating it in that genre uh, so anyway, so There's a couple interesting things about how this railroad was structured

The railroads mentioned in the terms of union, which is like newfoundland's sort of a constitution Well, because it was it was a separate country from canada, wasn't it? Yeah, it was a different colony and it had to uh Like unite with canada in the same way scotland did england y'all didn't have a referendum did you Alice? So just decided yeah, it was uh I don't know if there's a crown colony. I guess until 1907 1904 1905 then it was a dominion uh until 1949 but Really from 1933 to 1949 the island was governed directly from london by a commission of government

Awesome. How do we do it that aside from like building a railroad across a giant exposed fucking glacier? uh Well a legacy of underdevelopment Yeah, yeah, we got that a lot um our bad Yeah, I don't blame you personally You should alice was there. You should tearing up the rails. Damn you. I saw her It's all it's like those pictures of like old people in the civil war who look like kianoo reeves or whatever You look up the like crown commissioner and it's just look just looks like me

But with like a bicorner hat alice alice actually invented german's neckties So, uh One of some of the things was you mentioned in the terms of union is like how How freight rates are to be set and how the province expects the federal government to maintain the railroad This is when they joined with canada in in in 49 And then in 65 the trans canada highway opened which actually has in some ways a more convoluted route Yeah, for sure Trans canada rights, I suppose. No nothing nothing for that. I think actually the highway is

Like 30 or 40 kilometers longer than the railway was That sounds about right Does it does it regularly get covered in like 20 foot high snow? Oh god. Yes awesome That that's what we want to see from any any mode of transit Yeah, especially like a road though where you can slip off of it really easy Yes, you're like a railroad where you have like flanges, you know, so That opened in 1965 and they killed the caribou train as a result the

Train that went across the island got that they replaced it with buses Running a 16 hour schedule There's just not as much romance if you can't get stuck in a glacier for fucking three days Yeah, what am I supposed to do with all these fanfic tropes? Yeah, the uh, the buses they actually started those in 1967 They ran them concurrently with the train It was a weird situation where you had cn basically competing with itself to To say see buses are so much better and more modern Uh, so they kind of undermine their own operation there typical Canadian socialism

duplicating the work So they kept some limited passenger service on branch lines and then once a year They ran a passenger train across the island called the Trouters special And this was the first nail in the coffin right because no one was using not a lot of people were using the uh, the railroad itself for You know personal travel right morons Are you still shipping freight across this though? Oh, they're shipping a crapload of freight. Yeah But improvements to the main line no longer directly serve the traveling public So there is less, you know political support for the railroad

so Uh, we got to talk about who was operating the railroad at this point, which is canadian national, right? Down down down down down down To demonetized instantly for that they're not they're not competent enough to uh to get the imperial market treatment Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're gonna get we're gonna get uh, we're gonna get a copyright strike and i'm gonna say look I don't care. What is your I just want to know what your railroad is doing in newtown square, pennsylvania This is not a question that has been answered for me in newtown square There is a weird little branch of uh, cn and all I can find on it on the internet

Is that it has something to do with their chemical division and I want to know what fucking happened there Chemical division. Jesus. It's neocolonialism. It's like planting the flag Like you annex that part of pennsylvania for canada. You could have it. It's going to be the next province. Yeah Terms a union with canada for pennsylvania Yeah Just burn all the copies of that treaty too so, um Canadian national was sort of a nationalized system that was pieced together out of several railroads

That were sort of failing in canada, right and they competed directly with the canadian pacific railroad Which was about as big and entirely privatized Right, but but justin we love nationalized railroads like it's two things. We love railroads and nationalization So why was I singing off key the empire theme from star wars called the imperial march Because as a matter of fact, this meant that canadian national immediately took over the newfoundland railway Uh under the terms of union, right? Uh, so they were running the railroad. They were running the ferries to nova scotia Starting in 1949 and both of these things lost money at a pretty hefty rate, right? This was not a

A money-making operation at the time, especially after the trans canada highway was completed You know, they start saying all right. We're going to do some capital improvements here So they one of the first things they did was they built a system where your standard gauge railroad car Could have its bogies swapped with narrow gauge bogies At portabasque in about 1968 you can sort of see this on this mixed train here. You can see the tiny Um Narrow gauge passenger cars and then this big-ass standard gauge box car here. Yeah, it looks so unwieldy Hmm. I love to be like just rattling along on the top of this with like

Three feet of carriage out to each side with nothing underneath it. Awesome. It feels so safe when they got good at this They could swap out the bogies on a freight car in 15 minutes But that still meant if you brought 60 cars over on the ferry it took 15 hours to swap over a 60 car train Right. Yeah, it's a hefty delay. I think well, this comes up in the report, which I guess is soon But yeah, that was under strictly ideal conditions And when you're dealing with an average ferry load of you know, 40 to 60 cars You know that 10 or 15 hour delay is going to hold you back a lot Just a bunch of extremely grumpy newfoundlers

newfoundlers Yeah Change name of group chat in newfoundlers. Yeah, just just a bunch of extremely pissed off newfus having to change all the shit In like driving rain and snow under immense time pressure. I'm sure that went perfectly Well, they had they actually had a really nice facility there in the yard. It was quite large Um, and in fact, it was probably the main employer in the town Which, you know, it's something I I am told you're not supposed to say noofy. Oh, is it a slur? Have I committed slurs?

I personally don't care. It's one of those weird things. Uh, some people get their pennies in a bunch over and I guess, um Depends on how you say it I suppose. I mean in my defense I only said it because I was physically unable to pronounce newfound lander No, I don't mind in this context. It was the other the other n word Yeah, also just something just as an aside with regards to the uh, cn operations here So in addition to the railway and the uh, ferries to Nova Scotia, they also operate at all of the coastal boats And back in the day, uh, that was a huge operation. Uh, really there weren't any roads in newfound land worthy of the name

So getting around you had to take this packet or that packet just to get to anywhere Um, and there's still a handful of these routes in existence because shockingly the provincial government hasn't gotten around to finishing all the roads I mean that is praxis just for the wrong reasons Yeah, it was pretty confusing to me that we had to drive into the interior of newfound land As opposed to say on the southern coast or something Well, you know, it actually there was some talk about the south coast as a route when the railway was Conceived as well. It's just that uh, so you remember what port of basque looks like Yep

Uh, the most of the south coast of newfound land is worse than that very rocky very high cliffs and deep fjords, so Uh, you have to pretty much go into the interior just to avoid all that crap. Ah, I gotcha Yeah, that'll do it So anyway, I put in the notes here note the the size of the standard gauge boxcar here This is a regular mainline 40 foot boxcar now One of the advantages here is that any sort of like mainline railroad car that could You know fit within the 40 foot envelope could um, you know make it out of newfound land now

But in practice only canadian national and canadian pacific boxcars ever made it You know and then uh cn operated the whole railroad Um out of this wonderful place called monkton new brunswick That's not what the notes say. What do the notes say about monkton? Monk Monk Monkton is one of the worst places i've been in my life I've been

Fucking miserable. It's all the most miserable parts of north jersey, but somehow it's hotter It was 90 degrees when we were there, which was just appalling Compared to the fact that we had spent the last week 40 degree weather. I've never spent any significant time in new brunswick. I always just drove through it Probably the worst city on earth is what you're gonna say. Yeah, that is that is what I said I I it was it was not good All right, st. John is beautiful monkton. Yeah, and that's where the via rail station is so

uh Now there was a the the federal commission of inquiry into newfound land uh transportation Right also known as the sullivan convention Uh, they started looking into like how much this railroad was costing to run. This is in 1979, right as you can see from the picture It says 1979 because I had to reference that because I didn't put it in the notes um Yeah, it's just the the the notes are just a bunch of things about how bad monkton is repeated over and over for like

15 lines. Yeah, it's a little weird man. Do you need to talk? I remember we got out of the car and just like In disbelief felt like I was standing on the surface of the sun It was fucking horrible and the your beer was good. My beer was bad. Man was born to suffer Actually, the brewery was pretty good from my perspective because I had a good beer Liam had a bad beer. So it was not so good Uh, but we had driven from North sydney to monkton in like one shot

So it was just astonishing that the change in temperature I assure you the summers here are usually much warmer Great. This is just a thermocline. It was it was an anomalous week. I have no reason to believe you I liked the cold. So did I that's why you keep going to canada. Oh, okay. Well, you're you you're entitled to that, I suppose So anyway, according to newfoundlandheritage.ca the commission pulled no punches about the railway All of the available evidence indicates that Dot dot dot the railway cannot continue as a viable service the reports read Therefore it should now be planned to have a transportation network

Which does not include a railway in approximately 10 years time The recommendation 29 stated that plan should be commenced now to face out the railway But recommendation 30 provided for five years of renewed marketing and reorganization After which the decision to abandon the line would be reevaluated But it was clear the sullivan commission didn't have, you know, high hopes for the rail What a fucking like disney teen movie ass clause to include like what if somebody can just pay the Exact amount to buy out the youth center Then we won't have to shut it down

And then there was um, there was a competing report which was uh commissioned by the province As opposed to the federal government called the cabot martin report and that was published in 1980 And they said look all we need to do we just need to keep the railroad We need to convert it to standard gauge, right, which May or may not have been feasible. It's easy. Just pull the rails apart. I have to look this up I didn't know this for you just like you just get a stick or whatever and you just push the rails apart easy Well, I will say this the uh, the eerie railroad in the united states converted its entire main line from chicago to new york city from

Its own special gauge to standard gauge in two days Wow, that's a lot of guys By using the stick they pushed the rails apart Yeah They had this nice advantage that the eerie gauge was six feet As opposed to being narrower than four foot eight and a half inches else. They pushed them together Yeah, exactly. Uh, it doesn't work as easily the other way around Not sure why unfortunately. Yeah, there's probably like stuff in the way that might be like

Trees or like bridges and stuff or like a 500 foot gorge on one side to 500 foot cliff on the other Yeah, I'll do it. I don't think it's a bit tricky. Actually, uh, when going back to just briefly the, uh, improvements That c-ended when they took over They did embark on Replacing the steel in the main line to make it heavier Um, although I don't think that was ever completed across the entire main line And they never did that on the branch lines. Uh, the branch lines They were very sketchy

Up to the very end Um, but yeah, the Sullivan commission did go into quite a lot of detail on the fate of the railway Which the the heritage drill the heritage site doesn't really do it any justice by simply summarizing it like that Uh, I know they talked about the possibility of converting at the standard gauge Which obviously would mean a brand new line being constructed Um, they had a price estimation there and they talked about how it would improve travel times by Uh, I think they said 12 hours Uh, even the possibility of keeping it narrow gauge, but

Actually building it to a decent standard Uh, i.e. more straight and level And that would have put it on par with places like I guess New Zealand or Queensland, Australia Uh, then it still would have reduced travel times, but they just kind of waved it off by saying well the reduced travel time still Don't do away with the fact. We got to ship things over by the ferry and deal with Assembling trains and portabasque and I don't think it was a Strong already been on there on their part, but they did say well, you know

Yeah, not like anybody was like aware of the potential Risks of shipping a bunch of stuff by road and becoming dependents on that in 1979 We're already about it later. We're already about it later Literally every single thing has to go on this one road now It's fine. It's fine. Yes, and as established that road. I mean Some parts of it Are okay But that's

Okay, we'll we'll we'll get to the highway a bit later. I can't put that on the sign a big reflective sign saying uh, some parts of it are okay Well, that matter you've seen those potholes ahead signs They should just put one in portabasque and that's the only one they need because yeah as it turns out there are many of Yes, yes My favorite part of of driving a On the trans canada was that part outside of gander where we almost ran into a cliff face twice Uh, and I had two panic attacks And uh, ross managed to like lift me

Lived in together and went to jungle gym Was it on the way from st. John's or toward st. John's toward st. John's towards st. John's Oh, I can switch which section that is now We were we were we we were smart on the way back took the ferry from our jantja. Oh, oh You just drive the road once and you're like never again Oh, I I will post on the uh official the our twitter uh the picture I took of ross and I in the cabin on the longboat where both of us just look objectively miserable and there are no windows

And we had just been shit-faced on rickards red Yeah, you know, it's good when it's a brand of alcohol. I've never heard of it was good. It was good My wife drinks it. I like it. I thought it was a good beer Also mass market beer had that good old molson triple x had the good stuff I mean, I'm just I'm just drinking corona with this. So whatever. What's the IPA that's Doesn't taste like an IPA at all. I think god damn canadian IPA Nova Scotia No, no, no, this is like the mass market. Oh, alexander keith alexander keith. Yeah It just tastes like a lager

Yeah, enjoy hearing that in two audio feeds You get like a Doppler effect between the two of you probably we're cursed by god, unfortunately, so Yes Just one of these days we'll be recording this and the refiner is gonna explode frantically try to record before the su-dabi fire kills us both Yeah, just just like what does what does hydrogen fluoride leak sound like? Bad So in 1978, right, uh, canadian national begins a process of de-nationalization

Uh, yeah Yeah, so see they become a crown corporation, which is you know, sort of a state-owned corporation It's a synonym for useless Yeah, it's sort of like m-track, right It it's owned by the government. It's supposed to be profitable But you know, like r.a. will slide you the money at the end of the year if you don't make a fantastic Love to have a public good that has to make a profit every year

Yeah, I'm like on an island with not a lot of people and a lot of stuff that needs shipping Yeah, imagine that and then and we have Balkanization of the service right so before it was um the train in Nova Scotia The train at the ferry and and then the train on Newfoundland Were all owned by the same company, right? It was all canadian national. They all sort of work together Now we're starting to spin off companies in a different crown corporation So the ferries go to cn marine, which later became marine atlantic You say you say Balkanization

I'm taking that entirely literally and being like marine atlantic is core Serbian territory Get ready for some cursed Balkan youtube comments Yeah, wait look Newfoundland has always been part of Croatia and that's all there is to it Whoa, all right And then and then the Newfoundland railway itself was spun off as terra transport, right terra with an or like terra t t e r r a terra terra Yeah

Like like land in french because Newfoundland is is terra nova. Yeah It's it's a cool logo I was gonna ask about the logo situation. Good logo because like we had the mma Railroad logo and that was a good logo for a shitty railroad. So I'm hoping we're in a similar situation here This was also at the same time in addition to this Split up with cn marine and terra transport. That's when the passenger service was as re-established as via rail In the rest of the country long to go via rail. That's a very clever name And it works in both languages. So they were excited about that

It's just like the lrc's were were light rapid comfortable in english and then in french It was the acronym still worked. Yeah, leisure rapid Don't know what comfortable is comfortable. I'm gonna fail my citizenship test Not gonna be a landed immigrant. Wonderful So yeah, another word there were three companies that this was a it was a deliberate move right on the part of canadian national To make the Newfoundland railroad seemed like it was losing more money than it was So they could get more dollars from the government at the end. Oh, that's clever. I'm sure that worked flawlessly So sort of a bruster's millions railroad type situation. Yeah, and uh, you know

They started handling freight through three separate companies instead of one through the cabbage trade crossing Which of course almost all freight had to do Uh chaos and pandemonium at the ports. Um, no no for initially like no one even could figure out which company they were supposed to be Just a railroad operating operating license given to one france kafker Yeah, that's me. Oh, they'll be there on tuesday. I have to go to work at the railroad. You're half bug That's like lump it in with your thermos. Just like Well, it's you look so good. Yeah, man. It was a rough weekend. Let's just fucking unload this shit All right, they make you they expect you to double your product

You got two more legs I do want to say uh From this picture, uh, I guess well these containers. They actually still see a lot of these around Uh, not just on the island. They're floating around the mainland here and there. I saw a couple up in uh Somewhere near hamilton ontario last year just sitting in a field Hmm, that's that's not what you want to see those. Well, no, but it was still neat to see. Hey, it's a terra transport container It's interesting how like containerization started because this was um This was something that was pioneered in alaska on the white pass in yukon railroad

Which was another narrow gauge railroad, which was you know facing financial difficulties And they you know sort of came up with this idea. Well, why don't we have standardized containers that you know We can just offload from a ship and unload onto the train like immediately rather than doing all this You know crap with uh getting people with you know, push carts to unload and reload boxcars Yeah, big hooks for like handling sacks of stuff. Yes Uh, so the newfoundland railroad or terra transport now is one of the first like mass adopters a containerization um, and this was a very successful uh, uh business endeavor Um, and it was provided at very low freight rates because of you know the conditions in the constitution

Uh, and or in the terms of union um and because it was very successful the competition starts getting organized and I'm I'm gonna do the same thing I did last podcast Let me get a beer in this case then. Yeah, and I guess on the on the topic of the containers. Um Yeah, so they were yeah, they were hugely successful. Uh, because the solvent commission report It is it assumed that the freight rates at the volumes were going to go down year after year after year

And they were projecting by the mid late eighties. You'd only have one train a week sort of thing Uh, but I mean well into the mid eighties you had lengthy freight trains running every day Uh, again mostly with these containers Um, you know, it was only one train per day in each direction. Uh, you have so two main freight one eastbound one westbound and there was a Like an extra that would run across the middle of the island from uh, bishops falls Uh here to the west coast in cornerbrook And that actually still ran a couple coaches on it because there were a bunch of people who had cabins up in the middle of nowhere

So they accommodated that I don't know if that train ran daily It might have been a couple times a week or once a week or something like that um Love to be getting the train at the end of like 60 freight cars full of just absolute bullshit freight just like I don't know 12 other people That doesn't sound like it would be bad though. I mean because you could just like that's such a fucking murder mystery setup like No, no, but it sounds like the lights go out and then the least popular one of us has found

The fewest Please do not murder me in Newfoundland Thags in advance actually apparently That's being a murder go on Back before the uh, yeah when the path when the regular passenger service was still on the go in the 60s in the 50s Uh, there was also an option to ride a mixed train from port abas to st. John's Uh, and that I think took

35 hours fuck wow some yeah, so that's what you take when you're absolutely desperate um Yeah, every now and then you get a little extra trains running like that I just Living here under the current circumstances. I just I find it hard to fathom even a bus that runs multiple times a day Uh, we'll probably get into that when we talk about the highway But there is actually a coach system here, which then system is in very heavy quotation marks I I have I have returned. Ah, I need to work on my beer schedule to make sure

I don't need to take bathroom breaks in the middle of pot We we did not discuss the fan fix. No, it's fine We we got a we got a nice sound effect of me opening the second corona in here. So it was very good Very nice. Also a digression about murder now. I really want a beer though and I can't get up So thanks for nothing. I was also, uh, I I was big on drinking coronas. I'm marine atlantic because I was on a boat. Yeah, he was I'm just out here like pounding caesars at 12 30 a.m. Just like I'm gonna go to bed one way or another Ah, I'm on a boat in a tropical location. I'm drinking of corona. Yeah, that's it. That's where we were. Yeah

So we start seeing some competition for container traffic, right? And they're getting organized because the cn's uh undercutting them through terra transport, right? So you had Atlantic freight lines limited and newfound land steamship lines who were two private marine shipping companies They they're like the railroads undercut undercutting our rates. We can't compete with each other anymore We need to compete with the railroad So they merge into Atlantic container express Which is now called ocean x

I gotta say a few words about ocean x because they are still saying the same shit only now it's directed at marine atlantic Yeah, I mean so they had an operation here in corner work corner work had it has a port It's not really being used anymore. Uh, they used to bring their container ships in here and they gave up You know, uh, but then they keep complaining. Oh marine atlantic They keep stealing all our freight because they're so cheap And I propose to their ceo on twitter Well, maybe the solution is to merge marine atlantic and ocean x to form a single entity called marine atlantic We did not respond to that

Dickhead ceo go on the podcast. We'll just we'll just berate him constantly. Yeah for an hour Sid Heinz captain Sid Heinz. Oh, let's emphasize the captain. Jesus Captain fucking birds eye So Atlantic container express later to be ocean x complains the canadian transportation commission Um, that they can't compete with the low rate terra transport container service And they try to use the government to force them to raise their rates and you know, because they're like this is any competitive This is federal

I can't compete poor private industry me Yeah, like even even a fucking like D nationalized uh enterprise is still more efficient than you because it gets subsidies Like is that not the best argument for nationalization? It it it it is it is the best argument for nationalization in case there was any room for doubt there Oh, I wasn't sure for a second there The thing is they're like they're now trying their they're arguing the case before the the ctc and the threat of rates going up Starts to drive shippers away from using the railroad to using trucks

right Yeah I I really do I really do appreciate the sort of That like that's a that's a cultural difference instead of booing. You just have that There you go. I got it boo Terror transport terror transport starts trying to find efficiencies. They start eliminating branch lines Um, they start to um, you know, they really focus on their traffic originating from or destined for points off the island

Uh, you know particularly concentrating on traffic that goes from st. John's to portabasque Um and the ctc eventually rolls that the railroad has to raise it's right Oh, bullshit So even even if they didn't have to do that, right because they're cutting uh costs by cutting all these outlying things If you're some like, I don't know some business some muffler shop in uh, like fucking arse end of nowhere Newfoundland Yeah, if you run a muffler shop on dildo and you rely on the railroad to get your shipment of mufflers or whatever You can just either get it by truck or get fucked whether they put the rates up or not awesome

Well, I don't know if did the railroad ever make it to dildo. That's beautiful. Dildo's a real town in newfoundland. Yeah. Yeah, so, uh That section of the avalon, uh, there used to be Uh, a branch line on each side of that. Um, I don't know if it went into dildo proper But it went fairly close by, uh, but the main branch line ran up through, uh Uh God robert. Oh my god, bay roberts and carbon year and harbour grays all that um

Yeah, the branch lines were kind of They were a huge waste of money Uh, they were a lot of those were built In the early 20th century And I guess they again if they had been built to a decent standard, I suppose. Yes, you know, they would have been fine Uh But the only one that really mattered as far as traffic was concerned was the line around Between st. John's and harbour grays about 80 miles something like that

Uh, the other ones were Yeah, not they were really long and they serviced very tiny populations They were still useful to have and there were no other roads, you know, so they did get used But uh, yeah by the mid 80s, they were only getting one or two trains per week Uh, because they were you know, most of these places had had Uh secondary highways built by then And uh, they were close enough to connect with the main line or with the new trans island highway. So it made

In some sense less sense to run trains on a regular basis uh The most interesting branch line element, I guess was In the Bonavista Peninsula. This is another kind of like northeast coast of the island Uh, and they had to build a loop there and For some reason that was a big deal because most train loops, I guess are under mountains and the rocky is that sort of thing Um, but yeah, this is an open-air loop. So if that was preserved actually after the branch line was shut down in 84

Uh, got the cut the important thing. Oh, yeah well, you know Because it's the solvent commission report actually went into detail and said hey This section is not just a loop, but that whole branch line should probably be preserved as a heritage railway um But all we got was the loop left and uh, actually the provincial government shockingly hasn't done anything with it and let it rot Uh, there was a like a businessman leased it and had a theme park there for the 90s It was a fun little place. He had a little uh

Uh shunter locomotive running around with a couple carriages all done up in this faux circus train livery Uh, it was a ferris wheel on this restaurant. It was it was a cute spot, but first as tragedy then as well Indeed and then the guy fucking walked away from it and The place was vandalized and then in 2010 2011 hurricane igor Uh

Just flooded the place out and so now it looks like a post-apocalyptic nightmare Uh a shocking glimpse of things to come Uh, I have an idea for a patreon stretch goal now though. Yeah, we'll turn you loop Uh, are we just urbexing us or are we rescuing it? Because I think those Two different goals. I think oh, we're rescuing it. Oh, no, we're building it back motherfucker. We're coming back I want to run. I want to I want to run a tiny train on a loop. Yeah, he does. This is his whole life Just the most Podcast thing we could do would be to run a tiny loop that somehow also connects dildo to intercourse, pennsylvania

I got this. I got this. I will Be a pennsylvania boy. I will I will reach out to the armesh. Well, it is closer to come by chance Oh, yep Just fuck it go transatlantic bring it to twat in orc Do the live show on our trans transatlantic railroad meet in the middle Yes Just one extremely long bridge should be fine trans in more ways than one Oh

Um, all right, uh, so the ctc ruled the railroad has to raise rates Canadian national appeals the ctc ruling because it's in clear violation of the terms of union But the damage is done at this point, right? The threat is enough to move shippers away so, um Canadian national prevails the ctc orders revoked. I think it takes two years But at this point politicians were talking about roads for rails, right? Which is agreeing to close the railway and return for highway improvements

Hmm. Is this a highway that we're seeing before or after the improvements because looking at the Oh, hell. Yeah, the red I assure you it is uh after yeah, I was gonna ask is that trailer guy ahead of us Yeah, my boy. That is trailer guy. Yes We'll we'll talk about trailer guy in a second and this this I know where this is too This section where the pavement is slightly redder. It was disorient Uh near grand falls or uh springdale Between that section. Yeah, so since there was no passenger service on the railroad

There's no political support for railroad improvements other than from shippers So, you know in in 1988 the deed is done Newfoundland receives 800 million dollars for road improvements 800 million canadian dollars. That's like 36, yeah, six bucks u.s. Yeah um For road improvements in exchange for allowing canadian national to abandon the 549 remaining miles of the newfoundland railroad Why do I have to sign this contract in blood? That's what that that's why the asphalt is red here

Ah, yes, of course Because what do they do with the 800 million dollars? Yeah, short stretches of the Trans canada are turned into four-lane divided highways and they build a few new highways in st Johns and corner brook But you know most of the road is this treacherous unforgiving crowded high speed undivided three lane road Fuck you notice this section This section here has an actual suicide We've abolished those the united states, but you know the markings here

Wow, are you serious? I thought that was a normal thing. No the one way in which the u.s. Is more progressive than canada Uh, maybe you should explain what a suicide lane is for the uh for the people who don't know So a suicide lane is you have one lane for travel In one direction another lane for travel in the other direction and there's a shared passing lane in the center Yes, the way you would have a median, right? Yeah, it was interesting the markings On the on the uh on the highway across newfoundland, you know do indicate preference for Passing in one direction as opposed to passing in the other direction

But like ultimately that doesn't you know mean anything, you know, you can just you can pass if you want to Yeah, but and then hit a truck that's passing in the opposite direction at 60 miles an hour. We hit no trucks. We hit no trucks. I'm so glad Yeah, I actually would like to take a minute to to talk about our hero hero I think there's a three or four deaths on the highway in this last two weeks alone Sounds about right. So trailer guy Uh, we followed from I think about cornerbrook To damn near st. John's

Uh, no, it was his pass coin. It was after gander. We picked. Oh, okay. Well, that's a hell of a distance. Uh he drove ahead of us Well into triple digits and this is miles per hour not kilometers per hour Uh and managed to like block for us every single time I had an advance car. Yeah, we essentially had a blocker car because again I am now not in Canada. So I could talk about how fast I was driving Uh, we were regularly also in triple digits for that spot where it wasn't super foggy and terrifying

Uh, and this guy bit us. Just save us ass Save our ass at least a dozen times by blocking. I love this fucking social Darwinist highway This is what the outer burns would have been like if the wrong side had won the war Just a bunch of people driving at 200 miles an hour Just you need a fucking secret service motorcade by accident to fucking like survive Incredible that guy was mutual aid in truck form. Yeah Yeah, we we should we should we should get some like stickers or some shirts or something about trailer guy to introduce him into the The podcast extended universe. I would love that. I would buy a shirt that I would make money from that just says I heart trailer guy

Just that little just that little silhouette of the truck with the trailer on it. Awesome There were in Canada at this point, you know after they start They abandoned the Newfoundland railroad for you know, this highway, which is only drivable if you have trailer guy You know around this time there's a bunch of similar abandonments So Prince Edward Island had a railroad which was very hastily abandoned by Canadian national When they heard that the confederation bridge might have a railroad on it and then they'd be on the hook for running it Jesus It's

Canadian national the fucking your dad who goes out for cigarettes and never comes back just The bridge is nice. I can say that That driven across I've never been over the cable go across the bridge. We'll be make our triumphant return You just get arrested at the border for like 900 charges of speeding They don't know who we are or what we look like. Yeah, you are Newfoundland's number one most wanted. There is no other crime There's just like there's one cop on Newfoundland, but he's just like staring at a picture of Liam constantly for like seven hours Every day to burn that face into his memory the GTI just goes screaming past

We'll catch that guy going however fast in fucking fortune bay or wherever. Yeah very quickly because again Look if we had hit anything we would have already been we would have already been dead And no medic is gonna come for us. So you wanted to make the boat. We made the boat I don't know what the issue is. Oh, they're supposedly installing traffic cameras here now on the highways Jesus bastards, I know So uh And then vancouver island on the other side of canada their railroad was effectively abandoned about five years ago

And via rail is constantly cutting and cutting and cutting and cutting which is bizarre because a lot of a lot of canada is pretty well served by trains if you know, they just let them I mean, it seems like canada is quite like big I don't know if anyone else has noticed that and like it seems in some ways more efficient to have A dedicated route where you can pull something to locomotive than having a bunch of different trucks one of which has a trailer thankfully Uh, just like slamming into each other forever Well, there's like a weird that tracks are regulated in canada different than they are in the united states Which actually makes trucking a bit more practical because I think it's it's based on per axle load is how big your trailer can be versus

You know here in the united states and 80 000 pound limit flat In canada you can just stick more axles on the trucks and you know have as much weight as you want More axles is more better Just kind of gravitating towards the australian style road train fantastic. Oh, those are super tight Also pop them back to uh, atlantic canada with the abandonments So nova scotia still has some rail connection. There's the main line into halifax, but at the same time this was going on the Loop line that ran around the inapples valley through the south shore and back towards halifax that was taken up

Um, and that used and that's a fairly you know, it's not like it's the most populated place in the world But it's still quite a few thousand people living down there Even the line going to sydney There used to be a passenger train that linked up with via rails ocean service. That's gone now In fact, I don't even think they're running freight trains up there anymore Geez, I mean you mentioned halifax. That's that's a preview of an episode to come on a more the let's say Explosive topic Yeah, we're both reaching for the same pun there

But I mean even when I mentioned at the start of the episode like you could have taken a train from boston to halifax And then you could have taken a train from halifax Uh To north sydney, yeah, like it would have been a it would have been one transfer That was the goal that was run by boston and main and a bunch of other railroads because it wasn't it wasn't really a train So much as it was a bunch of through cars. They stuck together from various other trains Um, so you imagine you're leaving north station with uh A train of 16 cars none of which are owned by the same railroad none of the match

This is the future liberals war and they're all different colors and shit And now of course we can't conceive of that right? I mean if I tried to get as far as halifax by train from philadelphia, that's Up to montreal you go. Yeah Yeah, I gotta stay over a night in montreal because I get lucky with the aterondack Does anyone ever get lucky on the aterondack? I did Into montreal early enough that I could have switched to

The ocean right now. I was just being disgusting. That's because the train the train showed up Two hours early. There's a lot of padding in that schedule um But I guess uh, the question I wanted to pose here is is like is this inevitable, right? Is it always going to be the case that like, you know, these small island railroads are are are impossible to run? Um, especially where it's sparsely populated, right? Well, that doesn't seem like a canadian Locomotive or canadian buildings there. So I get the sense that this is your counter example. Yes, uh So this is the uh, sakhalin railway sakhalin. I don't know. I think it's sakhalin

Sakhalin So this is uh, this is in um, you know, this is in russia. It's that big island north of japan, right? Yeah Shot down a canadian airlines playing over at one time Well, you know, you gotta you gotta yeah, you gotta not enter soviet airspace unwittingly is the thing I think that was over a contraption, wasn't it? This is the double seven flag, right? Yeah, I I I definitely remember sakhalin in con in the context of Uh, the soviet air force shooting down It's close. So

Well, they're trying to prove the superiority of the railroad. Yeah Well, it's still there. This is the thing. Yeah If if you fly over the if you fly over sakhalin illegally You might see the railroad and then decide that railroads on like small outlying islands are a good idea And that would be counter to all of the principles of socialism in one country It might foment revolution somewhere else and obviously you can't have that But um, so this this railroad was uh, you know run under soviet administration for a very long time It's uh, you know, the island has a similar population to newfoundland. It's

It's I think about the same size very different shape though The terrain is similar And it's a narrow gauge railroad and it still runs to this day Although they just fully converted it to russian gauge A few months ago. I think they finished up the job. They they pushed the rails up With six. Yeah, they managed to push the rail And it's still uh, you know a central transportation system on the island I mean their highways are absolute garbage. I mean, yeah much worse than much worse than uh, the trans canada

Never ever drive in russia Uh, the thing when the soviet union felt was you had all of these new russians buying bmw's and misades And there was one road in moscow and ardebrat sky that you could drive them on everywhere else would just destroy your expensive german suspension Uh, and and it's still like that Uh, incredible. Yeah, um Don't drive in russia Uh, but yeah, it was uh maintained and it expanded and the soviet union Stalin tried to build a tunnel to sack hayland and they got as far as sinking

They got as far as sinking shafts for the tbms Uh in the 1950s and then stalin died and everyone realizes with dumb project Kind of realized that you didn't actually need all of these like Artists and poets and stuff who like to dig a giant fucking tunnel to the middle of nowhere Now, but putin is making noises about trying it again now. Oh, he's always a boy Our boy is a big wet dumb president of russia is Constantly making noises about big infrastructure projects and it never happened if this ever like gets to more than like a paper stage It will be as a way of shoveling 50 million rubles to some guy whose cousins with some other guy

We're gonna build a tunnel from sack hayland to uh Hokkaido in japan that's gonna happen. That's happening. Well, I mean the the tunnel between the mainland I mean, I don't think it was a huge distance wasn't it's like like five miles. I think yeah In fact, uh, there's talk here about Well, I mean off and on even the solvent commission report talks about this building a tunnel between newfoundland and labrador Uh, and they're finally The provincial government seems to be taking that seriously now And even in the federal election, some of the candidates were openly talking about it

Uh, it's the same huge transfer of wealth, but it's between two guys named Oh And they it's they're gonna build it and it's gonna be shit, uh, I mean in order for it to work nicely, uh, well Ideally we'd have a kebek north shore labrador railway network that would link to the island, but At the very least they're just gonna put a shitty road along the kebek north shore to service the communities there and I don't know that there's people talking about doing something along the lines of the channel

So you got like a train that loads up the cars and then goes Um As opposed to doing uh, like a norway or denmark model where you just have you know, regular tunnels you can drive through Uh, so I don't know how far that's actually gonna go. I think There is a lot of potential there. I mean, especially for the northern peninsula, but Uh, I just I can't see the powers that be doing anything good with it Hmm. I mean, this is the thing, right? If you do a channel tunnel, uh, sort of Um, mechanism it will at least be morally better than the actual channel tunnel in that it will like kill fewer immigrants

Well, yes, yeah Unless you put a border unless you secede from canada and like put a border in the middle of it then Uh, I I think it will be an improvement Uh, the chauvinists here will want to keep Labrador. We like sucking the mineral resources out of it Sucking kebekwa. Yeah, that's what it comes down to in some cases Yeah, I mean, I I guess the the the thing I guess to Conclude on is like is is there a future where we have a railroad in newfoundland? And yes, please personally, I think yeah, yes, please

Uh, we're we're we've got this whole climate change to hickey that's happening, right? Yeah, the the thing that's asking the question is there a future with a newfoundland rather than is there a future with a newfoundland railway Uh, well, I mean, I think newfoundland comes out on top and climate change a lot more than a lot of other places, but Just get a much higher fjord I suppose the cliffs are so high here. Don't worry about it Yeah Well planning a move uh gonna revise my french so But it's like, you know

The efficiency at transport you get with railroads. You can't beat any other way. I mean, you know, every 4,000 horsepower locomotives doing the work of you know, uh 100 or 200 500 horsepower trucks You know, I think if we're if we're serious about this and we're not gonna You know, we're not gonna go with the urban liberal stance, which is everyone in newfoundland should move to Montreal And learn the code Yeah Oh god, you gotta put it back Look, I mean, I think there is something genuinely important to this about like, uh

Having a solution to climate change that does include Let's say less populated areas and like rural areas and like let's say traditionally underserved populations for sure That like if we're gonna if we're gonna do this thing where we Fix society, we do have to bring Everybody along with us and you're not gonna do that by making everybody learn ruby on rails Uh, you just have to do the rails part. Yeah, you just do the rails part and it turns out like this is, uh

Remarkably practical, right? I I I almost forgot to include this in the presentation because I constantly erase the first nations Oh, yes, there you go. Yes So this is um, the train you're looking at here is the other railroad in uh, Newfoundland and labrador. Oh hell. Yeah, this one is of course in labrador This is to shu itin rail transportation. I don't know if I think I think it's shu itin Shu itin, but you know, I'm in uh, I I have no conception. I've had it properly pronounced it I think it's extremely cool livery though. Uh, oh the train's logo. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, and the logo is really nice Sexy train. Yes. So this is part of the former kebek north shore and labrador railway

Which ran from septils, uh kebek to labrador city. Um, Jesus. How do you fuck up french that badly? Seven islands set Uh, doesn't that doesn't matter in kebek. I actually want to point out that I don't I don't know how to pronounce anything Well, the first time we went to kebek. We we stopped at a tim hortons, of course the only the only thing Yeah, I'm gonna tell this story and It's all going in the clouds slash do not eat went in there He tried to order a black coffee a large black coffee and managed to say

Oh Cafe Lodge noir, please I mean that is basically how most anglo-canadians speak french, right? Tried to order a coffee in two languages and successes You're from ontario. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot how to speak both english and french I'm just I'm just happy to distract from the newfound list thing Well, you did your best

So, so, um Just just sue in The thing North wind in english Yeah, they took over a 134 mile 134 mile branch line to chefferville kebek Uh, which the railroad was trying to abandon

So, you know, the uh, the first nations came and said look we need this railroad, uh, we're gonna run it And Jesus how sad that the they only considered that option when it was like, yeah, we're just gonna let it rot Yeah Yeah And and and the people who actually live here and who live there first get have to like be like Yeah, maybe we should do the thing instead of you doing that. Oh, I had never considered that Maybe instead of a banding in it, you should, you know, let us run it so we can have a train Yeah, and so they provide, you know, essential passenger and freight service to very isolated communities in northern kebek

And this is a boy. I got to get through Three first nations here Oh boy, this is jointly owned by the innu nation of madam the kush lakh john the Naskapaki nation of Oh boy

I'm sorry You were so close just praying when I started when I first became muslim and I didn't know any arabic. That's what I sounded like Yeah, all three of those first nations there are their communities are all around the shafferville area Like justin said extremely isolated Uh, not a single road other than the railway Uh, yeah, labrador is still Yeah, pretty much a isolated place in general. So this railway serves a huge and vital service to them Hmm mutilate it is it's the trailer guy scaled up to a train railroads

Yeah to train guy Hmm, this is why we did the uh, this is why we did the acknowledgement of the stolen lands We were on at the beginning to do pennants for my Horrific mispronunciations later on. Yeah, it was gonna tie it all together We do actually plan this stuff ahead of time. That's us. That's what we do is plan good So, I mean, it turns out like you can just have a railroad if you want to Imagine that Yeah, you personally your your community can have a railroad

Yes, I mean not to not to I mean, I'm still the um big bad big state marxist leninist, but it turns out that you can autonomously organize these things you can Like have this framework of a sovereign nation that is like, yeah Let's just have a fucking railroad that doesn't like that that goes to our town. So we don't all die from not having medicine Uh You can do that. You can you can organize that you can organize anything a better world is possible Yes, she said over confidently I say it's still possible to come to this province and travel as a passenger on train

although Yeah, uh, one of the odd things Uh The once it reaches emerald junction, which is near lab city. The train doesn't actually go into lab city, which is kind of Odd uh, because that's the main population center in lab or west. But anyway, it stops This is like 50 kilometers to the east of labor city. So unless you have someone waiting there Uh, it's basically a stop in the middle of nowhere Uh, but yeah, it does like it said terminate in satila, which is

20 000 people something like that and that connects to basically everything else in kebek, right? Uh, so it's very handy. Uh, shockingly Okay, so there was this Concept that was floating around. I don't know how seriously the federal government ever took it of developing northern railways in canada Uh, like for example extending the line from church all up along the west coast of hudson bay into nunavut And also having lines going to northern ontario northern kebek And also having a line cutting across labrador ending in goosebay purpose of this being you know

Ending or reducing isolation in the north and Having greater flow of goods, especially in the arctic. We're Getting anything is incredibly costly Uh, so this is part of a concept to have more railroads and greater ports Uh, to service the canadian north, but nothing's materialized of that in any Significant sense. Well, it sounds like the kind of thing that you'd need Uh, concerted large program of government intervention some kind of like new deal of a green nature, perhaps a bit of socialism in there

Yeah, a little bit of socialism Yeah I will say uh That the uh, the green aspect is starting to catch on With quite a few people here in this province Uh, lots of people have been drawn out to the climate strikes that have been going on every few weeks and Uh, some of the federal candidates with the local social democrats Uh, also

Said friendly things but bringing a railway back to newfoundland and none of those got elected here I mean, of course our party the communist party talks about it all the time because you know, we love trains Every communist has to love trains. It's like written in the rulebook or something I have heard that. Yeah page two of the manifesto. Yeah But yeah, so just just but just the fact that the ndp like the new the new democrats that they That a couple of them were talking about a railway here in newfoundland again. That's really neat. I mean for years I thought I was Just the lone crank who like trains, but yeah, there's actually still a few people here that are into that

So, I don't know we could build something. Yeah The three cranks the lone gunman Uh, the the strange thing about this is like it's weird to look at a train like that There's enormous fucking diesel engine and much like the nuclear power episode which we uh previously recorded and say this is actually the environmentally friendly option But it is um It it it really is it just it's it's difficult to process the kind of scale that we're talking about here And nobody's gonna do a photo of this where we put it next to I don't know 500 trucks, right?

But that's that that's basically the deal, right? Yeah, and you're comparing all of that Exhaust and all those fumes and everything It it is it's it's If not a totally green option It's kind of things like this are the only way we can Restructure our society in time to make a real important difference to not all dying Also, you can put wires up saying here the provincial government's attitude towards green Uh is hydroelectric dams

Uh, and those are problematic. Uh, and so they're okay. I mean you get a fish tube out of it And the everyone has a fun time on twitter that afternoon Making fish tube memes. Well the uh, the big thing up now up here now, uh, is Major hydroelectric project of course in labrador. Uh, it's at a place called muskrat falls and uh, Obviously the first nations in the air are pissed off about it because it's flooding their land naturally Uh, you know some of them are you know people there are partially supportive because it's jobs if nothing else but by and large people are opposed to the project, you know because it's Again attack on their sovereignty in addition to the environmental impact of flooding all that land and potential

Collapses that you know Could kill people and destroy infrastructure and so on and the other thing Uh, that's got people pissed off about it is the cost. I mean I know we're here talking about building a new railway in newfoundland. I mean that wouldn't be cheap, of course You'd be looking at Six or seven billion dollars for sure If you're building it right That's just a rough estimate off the top of my head. The government is putting 13 billion into this dam

Uh, and you know, it is a good part of that is a loan guarantee from the federal government But even so it's okay for them to put the in their view It's okay from the throw that kind of money at a project that's of questionable utility But something that would be actually useful to a great number of people and also very green in its own way is kind of just laughed Aside it's like, well, jeez. We all got trucks But it's not it's not sexy and it doesn't have good. I mean me calling it a sexy train aside Uh

It doesn't make good Photos you can't have Justin Trudeau pose in front of it like you can a dam So you can't look we're not we're not meeting any of our Our climate targets under the Paris Agreement, but we built this dam So we must be taking it seriously and I must be an environmentalist And meanwhile they want to double down on oil production in 10 years, of course You know, you also got to keep Justin Trudeau away from the shoe polish Yeah

Gotta get that dig in there somewhere Yeah, you just got to keep away from the crude oil because like it's too viscous, but he'll try it anyway I knew it as he sticks his face into a barrel of uh, of Alberta crude Yeah, like that one scene in three kings except me now So before we Concluded, I guess we're getting to that point. I just want to add with the current state of transportation here, which uh, surprise surprise is fucking awful Uh, so yeah with regards to the highway. We know that shit, uh, but there is a there is a bus system here. So That

CN bus system that was brought in to replace the passenger trains when that was abandoned in 69 They kept on going until CN was privatized in 96 and uh It was taken over by a private firm then and they've done fucking nothing with it fantastic Uh, so the Sullivan commission report was like new finance should have this huge Uh, province wide comprehensive integrated bus system like get a ticket in st John's that'll get you to st Anthony or goosebay port of ask wherever

Uh, and have multiple buses running from the same location each at multiple times during the day So that you don't just have to get the eight a.m. Bus. You can get a bus at 10 or two o'clock or whatever uh Well, there were a few slight improvements, but obviously since privatization Uh, it's it's just the main highway Uh, and you get that bus at 8 in the morning or not at all Uh, and it takes like I said for 14 hours Assuming the weather is good between st

John's and port of ask and if you want to go anywhere off the main highway there Is a handful of like privately owned Uh, shuttle bus slash taxi companies Uh, some of them are fairly cheap, I guess, but their schedules aren't linked with the main highway bus Of course not that would be too easy and uh, again, they run on very limited schedules anyway So I mean you might get into cornerbrook and they have to wait a day or two to get the bus to where you're going And it might not go as far as you want to go anyway And all for the privilege of sitting in a cramped van for a seven or eight hours, right?

Of course, yeah I will say that the main highway coaches are they're okay. They're comfortable enough, but Yeah, it's no substitute for a proper train. Hmm. So car bad train good bus Intermediate oh, oh and the buses are expensive Imagine that bus bad

Yeah, it's a a one-way trip from cornerbrook the st. John's is about 110 dollars Jesus wow Yeah, so it was bad when it's cheaper to just drive and pay your own gas Well, it seems like uh That's a massive engineering disaster right there Along with of course the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse The major engineering disaster we'll be coming out next episode episode. Yes, fine life episodes Question mark question mark question mark plus one

I don't know what episode this is so I can't tell you what I am confident Tacoma Narrows is coming up soon Yes, we're also going to get some bumper stickers and some Badges too that someone has made for us of well, there's your problem and also train good car bad. Are we getting those? Uh, yeah, I think so, uh, but we'll put the link in the thing And I did say on the twitter that we would give a shout out on the next episode to The first person to send us a photo of the train good car bad sticker stuck to a train Don't break any laws don't die, but yeah do that

And um, I guess uh, since we're wrapping up go go to our patreon Where by the time this is up the grover house episode should be up right now about 30 minutes into editing and good job It is a good episode. I I do I do um regret There was an obvious joke we should have made which we missed Which was oh, that's not like us at all. Who would do that? Something something about like Notre Dame de Grover or something For the proper house of that spire. Yeah, yeah And then um, all right, uh before we go the plugs. Let's go

Uh, listen to trash future out my podcast. It's available wherever podcasts are podcasted Watch my youtube channel. Do not eat, uh About cities and socialism. I promise to be another franklin episode at some point. You I was wondering about all the people Yeah, the comments are are getting heated. It's just like he'll get there. But folks he'll get there when it's done Our boy needs time to work his magic Yeah, I mean apart from everything else city skylines takes like an hour to Yeah, especially when you've loaded down with mods isn't awkward I feel like the launch time has extended in the last few months. I don't know what it is

Uh, definitely it it may be one of the like, uh, 11,000 mods that I have installed But also I refuse to play it without any of them. So Yeah, uh breaks. Yeah, uh, I You want to go you want me to go? All right Uh, I guess I'll go. All right. Uh, yeah, I'll rock them. Uh, Lea Bander said at shut the fuck up at the whole planet than who said on twitter Uh,

Just want to say special thanks to my boy trailer guy For uh for blocking for us or approximately 250 miles. We couldn't have done it without you. I love you so much Yeah, let's do some trailer guy shirts or something. Yes, please and uh Sean do you have anything to plug before we go? Not especially. I want to follow me on twitter that Sean read. Uh, like I said, I'm also just retweet communist stuff Uh, sometimes I say things that are witty. Uh Oftentimes, uh, not but uh, yeah Thanks for having the show though

All right. Yeah, thank you for blessing us with your expertise and wisdom about new Anytime And and yeah, sorry for calling you. That's all right. And also new found if you do get back here Look me up. I'd love to have a coffee or something or a beer Sure sounds good. That's good. Uh, we spent uh a total of like three minutes in cornerbrook at a mcdonald's and the train Who just you liked the train? Oh, yeah, we did go to the train. Yeah, the only good train. Yeah Yeah, we did go to the train museum. Yeah, that is our first live show is going to be the train museum in cornerbrook Actually, I should say the one important message to us there

The the steam locomotive there was interesting That was the first picture in the slideshow because it was uh made in philadelphia. It was like, ah Running through every fucking episode It's very clever of you. Thank you I'll take care of it for it. All right. Yeah, I was gonna say why did you say I don't know? I was ready Jesus All right, uh I'm gonna end it. We're an hour and 30 minutes

Good podcast everyone. Thank you for having me on again podcast. Have a good evening folks All right, now we just have to record all of this again in french You lost uh speak english Vos y votre problex All right, all right. Au revoir. Au revoir. Au revoir. Bonne chance. Merci