It begins at platform 0:
A tacked on extension of necessity in afterthought.
In championing the rich history of a twice redundant train line, the laughing throng of suited jacks and polished media shook hands as they announced a specious budget and broke the graded ground below so that construction may begin: workers standing by to tack the rail back into the earth and return the T7 line to its respected heyday.
T7: A phoenix of forgotten yore that rested peacefully within the annals of Sydney transit history. It’s re-emernence needed to hide the anarchy of a 1990s West Sydney street directory–the town planner’s regrettable hindsight intermixed within the concrete.
The original route, winding and long ago covered by apartments was deemed to be impractical, and further the ideas of tunneling under flemington seemed too lofty for an Olympic deadline; so it came to be a narrow path was etched into the empty land next to Lidcombe station: dropped to the earth and then dragged toward the mound of freshly laid pavers and olympic stadia.
A loop line.
One train putters along the single track towards the park and then ambles back again; two stations all it will ever know.
For the briefest of seconds it will glimpse the crossover rail to Strathfeild and what is the great mystery of a network beyond.
Hints of a metro are whispered of within the train yard, driverless, the conductors mutter, It’s rails too narrow for any of these trains.
The Light rail too, once only a kid brother, had grown in size. An emergence of times before returning trams to the CBD and allowing the faint bell of distance to grow all the more resonant.
An old K-set rolls up and back without complaint, the track, in a way, was always destined to become a retirement line. Dusty compartments, swaddled with faded graffiti and bearing the scars of history, the scars of being alive. Worn down bearings all the while whistling with the knowledge that all too soon their last day shall come.
But yet, life suddenly springs anew.
Flocks of people line in wait at platform 0, a sepia like hue crossing over the day as they march aboard, full of smiles and tribal banter; the colours of their clan draped across their shoulders in scarf or in jersey. They talk to strangers as if they were close friends, they talk of the week before, the year beyond, they sit with a nervous joy, expectations becoming a flutter of energy as the train pulls into the station
And in days of increasing rarity, others line the standing area of platform 0.
Swaddled with old tour shirts and strange scraps of festival clothing, they wait for this forgotten line, filled with the excitement of some oncoming, and soon passing, celebration.
They return to the station in time–searching home or a transfer to the network beyond–and the night grows quiet. But yet, the train remains; pulling away once more to pick up whatever stragglers still remain behind.
Built upon the husk of history and the weary many’s need to work, the ancestral line of old lived gently, allowing the final red rattler to politely shake itself into antiquity.
Stations like the Metropolitan Meat Platform, servicing the abattoir and brickworks beyond, have faded into the plaques of forgotten history, their traces paved over and expected to be a minor historical find at some date in the future.
Somewhat fitting that a view of Rookwood cemetery is adjunct to the T7’s home station; the business savvy nearby stonemason carving headstones well into the night, ever patient, always busy.
At some date in the future this line may once again be retired.
No fanfare shall call a last post on this day as it is fenced off and packed away: scant traces of a lost path leaving only slight impression behind.
And as the train rolls into platform 0 its tracks will disappear and time will forget the T7 once more; for the memory of history is fickle.
And a train network knows the word fickle like no other.
J.McCray
2020
Sunday Short Stories 