Railbridge to Sunrise

When the human was a child, it rode it’s pushbike across this rail bridge every evening on the way to pick up it’s allotment of newspapers for it’s paper run…

… it could be quite scary for a 12 year-old, riding across this ancient, steel structure during winter, with entire trees, washed from up-country, crashing into the bridge piles, making the whole structure vibrate like a gong… all the trapped trees would create a deafening roar as the incomprehensible volumes of water coursed through, and over them. If you looked for more than a few seconds at the water raging over the log-jams, it began to feel like the whole bridge was moving sideways.

It was also a trip into unknown territory, as the human lived on the opposite side of the river, making for unpleasant encounters, on the narrow footbridge, with thugs from the other side… but mostly it was just fabulous, especially with massive freight trains, sometimes with three diesel locomotives pulling them (not much further over the bridge, the rail track faces a very long, steep incline, as it climbs out of the river valley), rumbling across the bridge… for some reason that huge rumble was comforting, unlike the scary tree collisions.

As an adult, the human loves these time-bitten, almost Victorian, steel structures, with all their industrial-scale details, like service pipes and huge bolts and rivets. The freight trains are shorter, these days, trucks having gutted the rail-freight industry, but the human still loves them, and finds their careful, low-speed rumble just as comforting (: