Hartley Neita, ContributorThe railway was integral to the economic, cultural and social life of the village of my youth. It carried goods from the wholesalers in Kingston for the two retail shops which served the district and for those in nearby communities. It was therefore a lifeline to the great and far city.
The bags of flour and rice, the cases of condensed milk, and the barrels of mackerel and other imported fish arrived at the station in the freight cars and were unloaded on to mule-drawn carts by men who worked on the platform. Another employee was a watchman who walked the platform all night with a truncheon swinging menacingly as he protected those goods which were parked in the freight cars overnight.
Unlike the Kingston and Montego Bay railway stations which had first class waiting rooms, separate from the second class ones, our station had one waiting room in which rich and poor stayed in a community mix of classes until the train chugged into the station. The clocks mounted on the wall of the waiting room and in the Station Master's Office, were linked to the second to all stations throughout Jamaica tick-tocking at the same rhythm. And they were the most accurate public timepieces in Jamaica. The men of my village boasted of the accuracy of their Benrus and other Swiss-made watches by proudly claiming that the time strapped to their wrists were "Railway Time", and therefore was the Right Time.
The train and its stations, from Kingston to Montego Bay, May Pen to Frankfield, and from Spanish Town to Port Antonio were part of our Geography lessons in elementary school. We knew them by heart. We also knew that the longest tunnel in Jamaica was a three-quarter-mile railway tunnel which bore through the hill west of the Rio Cobre and ending near to Bog Walk. We knew, too, that the first railway line ran from Kingston to a village named Angels near the dam on the Rio Cobre in St. Catherine. When we first passed Angels in our later years, there was no railway station there, but we were told - maybe it was a legend - that an earlier Governor of Jamaica had his country residence somewhere in the neighbourhood. The train therefore provided His Excellency with transport to his doorstep!
In our village, the train arrived and stopped in the station every morning at 7.00 a.m., not 7.00 and 10 seconds. Precisely at 7.00! And it was sent off by the chief conductor at 7.04 a.m., on its way to May Pen, Old Harbour, Spanish Town, Grange Lane, Gregory Park and Kingston. In the evening it came from Kingston at 6.20 p.m., with its one-eyed headlight piercing the dusk, and left for Clarendon Park and Porus at 6.24 p.m. after its passengers disembarked and the porters had handed over the mail bags to the Station Master.
The village knew that the Post Office window would be opened 30 minutes later by the Post Mistress after she had sorted the mail and placed the letters from Panama and other distant lands in the alphabet pigeon holes in her office. The station was also a disembarkation point for cricket teams and their supporters from the Lucas, Kensington, Wembley, and Unifruitco Clubs in Kingston.
Flourishing business
These teams came on public holidays such as New Year's Day, Easter Monday, the King's Birthday, and Emancipation Day. The hundreds who came into the village on these excursions provided a flourishing business for the fruit and snack vendors, and the bars especially (although it was against the law for them to be opened on public holidays).
And because they had so much fun watching the cricket and sipping the cups that cheered, the visitors did not want to leave in the evenings; and it was only the impatient blowing of the whistle by the train driver which made them run from the cricket field to the station for their homeward journey.
We, too, the precocious young boys at the time, did not want them to leave as there were some pretty Kingston girls in these excursion parties. Sadly in later years also, some of our own home-grown beauties got married to the Kingston men they had met on the village green. The train is coming, baby; the train is coming down.
Next week:- Part 2.
