'Come on,' George said. 'Meet the engineers, eh?' He wasn't a horse man, himself.
'Yes. Thank you.'
He opened the forward door of the horse van with a key, and with a key also let us through into the baggage car.
'The doors are kept locked, eh?'
I nodded. We swayed down the long baggage car, which was half empty of freight and very noisy, and George, having told me to remove and lay aside my waistcoat in case I got oil on it, unlocked the door at the far end. If I'd thought it noisy where we were, where we went made talking impossible.
George beckoned and I followed through a door into the heat of the rear section of the engines, the section containing among other things the boiler which provided steam to heat the whole train. George pointed wordlessly to an immense tank of water and with amusement showed me the system for telling the quantity of the contents. At intervals up the huge cylinder there were normal taps, the sort found over sinks. George pointed to the figures beside each, which were in hundreds of gallons, and made tap-turning motions with his hands. One turned on the taps, I understood with incredulity, to discover the level of the contents. Supremely logical, I supposed, if one had never heard of gauges.
We went on forward into a narrow passage beside yards of hot hammering engine of more than head height, throbbingly painful to the senses, and then passed over a coupling into another engine, even longer, even noisier, even hotter, the very stuff of hell. At the forward end of that we came to a glass-panelled door, which needed no key, and suddenly we were in the comparative quietness of the drivers' cab, right at the front of the train.
There was fresh cool air there, as the right-hand window, next to the bank of controls in front of the engineer's seat, was wide open. When I commented on it, George said that that window was open always except in blizzards, eh?
Through the wide forward unopening windows there was a riveting view of the rails stretching ahead, signals shining green in the distance, trees flashing back at a useful seventy miles an hour. I'd never been in the cab of a moving train before, and I felt I could have stayed there all day.
At the controls sat a youngish man in no sort of uniform, and beside him sat an older man in cleanish overalls with grease on his fingers.
George made introductions. 'Robert', that was the younger, and 'Mike', the elder. They nodded and shook hands when George explained my position. 'Give him help, if he asks for it.'
They said they would. George patted Robert on the shoulder and pointed out to me a small white flag blowing stiffly outside to the right of the front windows.
'That flag shows this is a special train. Not in the timetable. It's so all railwaymen along the way don't think the Canadian is running thirty minutes early.'
They all thought it a great joke. Trains never ran early the world over. Late was routine.
Still chuckling, George led the way back through the glass door into the inferno. We inched again past the thundering monster and its second string to the rear, and emerged at last into the clattering reverberating peace of the baggage car where I was reunited with my waistcoat. My suitcase, I was interested to see, stood in a quiet row of others, accessible enough if I wanted it.
George locked the baggage car door behind us and we stood again in the quiet horse car which looked homely and friendly with the horses' heads poking forward over the doors. It was interesting, I thought, that as far as they were able in their maybe four-foot-wide stalls, most of them were standing diagonally across the space, the better to deal with the motion; and they all looked alert and interested, sure signs of contentment.
I rubbed the noses of one or two under the frowning suspicious gaze of Ms Brown who was not pleased to be told that she should let me in whenever I asked, eh?
George chuckled his way out of the horse car and we meandered back down the train together, George stopping to check for news with each sleeping-car attendant and to solve any problems. There was a sing-song in progress in the dome car and the racegoers in the dayniter had formed about four separate card schools with cash passing briskly.
The overworked and gloomy chef in the main dining car had not lost his temper altogether and only a few passengers had grumbled that the roomettes were too cramped; the most usual disgruntlement, George said.
No one was ill, no one was drunk, no one was fighting. Things, George said eventually, were going so smoothly that one should expect disaster any time now, eh?
We came at last to his office which was basically a roomette like my own: that is to say, it was a seven-by-four-foot space on one side of a central corridor, containing a washbasin, a folding table and two seats, one of which concealed what the timetable coyly called 'facilities'. One could either leave the sliding door open and see the world go by down the corridor, or close oneself into a private cocoon; and at night, one's bed descended from the ceiling and on to the seat of the facilities which effectively put them out of use.
George invited me in and left the door open.
'This train,' he said, settling himself into the armchair and indicating the facilities for me, 'is a triumph of diplomacy, eh?'
He had a permanent smile in his eyes, I thought, much as if he found the whole of life a joke. I learned later that he thought stupidity the norm for human behaviour, and that no one was as stupid as passengers, politicians, pressmen and the people who employed him.
'Why,' I asked, 'is it a triumph?'
'Common sense has broken out.'
I waited. He beamed and in a while went on, 'Except for the engineers, the same crew will stay with the train to Vancouver!'
I didn't to his eyes appear sufficiently impressed.
'It's unheard of, eh?' he said. 'The unions won't allow it.'
'Oh.'
'Also the horse car belongs to Canadian Pacific.'
I looked even blanker.
He chuckled. The Canadian Pacific and VIA Rail, who work so closely together, get along like sandpaper, good at friction. Canadian Pacific trains are freight trains, eh?, and VIA trains carry passengers, and never the two shall mix. This train is a mix. A miracle, eh?'
'Absolutely,' I said encouragingly.
He looked at me with twinkling pity for my lack of understanding of the really serious things in life.
I asked if his telephone would work at the next big stop which came under the heading of serious to me.
' Sudbury?' he said. 'Certainly. But we will be there for an hour. It's much cheaper from the station. A fraction of the price.'
'But more private here.'
He nodded philosophically. 'Come here as soon as we slow down coming to Sudbury, eh? I'll leave you here. I have to be busy in the station.'
I thanked him for everything and left the orbit of his beaming smile knowing that I was included in the universality of stupid behaviour. I could see a lot more of George, I thought, before I tired of him.
My own door, I found, was only two doors along from his, on the right-hand side of the train when facing forwards. I went past without stopping, noting that there were six roomettes altogether at the forward end of the car: three each side. Then the corridor bent to the side to accommodate four enclosed double bedrooms and bent back again through the centre of open seating with sleeping curtains, called sections. The six sections of that car were allocated to twelve assorted actors and crew, most of them at that point reading, talking or fast asleep.
'How's it going?' Zak said, yawning.
'All quiet on the western front.'
'Pass, friend.'
I smiled and went on down the train, getting the feel of it now, understanding the way it was put together, beginning to wonder about things like electricity, water supply and sewage. A small modern city on the move, I thought, with all the necessary infrastructure.