Leonardo Blair, Staff Reporter
Dervan Forrester, 78, stands inside this abandoned coach frame along the train lines in Gregory Park, St. Catherine - PHOTO BY LEONARDO BLAIR
FOR MANY Jamaicans, residing alongside old train tracks, a local rail service remains a distant memory growing dimmer by the years.
"I used to take the train to Montego Bay and Town (Kingston) most evenings. People used to sell and so on around here," said 78-year-old Dervan Forrest. "But the trains stop run, fire destroy the station and them (government) just leave it. After that, people come and take plenty parts off it (train station)."
Dervan lives along the train line in Gregory Park, St. Catherine. His yard is so close to the lines that in years gone by when the trains ran, he could tell passengers 'good morning' from his bedroom window during a halt. He had become so accustomed to the timed rumble of the train on the tracks it had become a part of him.
HOME FOR CACKLING FOWLS
But today, after more than a decade since the regular halts and friendly conversations, Dervan has grown quiet, quiet like the tracks and steel coach frame overgrown with vines behind his house. The vines have canopied on the coach frame making a nice home for a group of cackling fowls.
"Everybody used to do a little selling but now everything kinda gone down." That's how Dervan described the current prospects for a railway revival. He has stopped looking up, no spatter of optimism. Even though just a couple of days before our conversation they changed the lumber under the tracks. There was also a man with some machine "that looked like he was surveying something."
If Dervan hadn't seen them come before several years ago, he would be thinking that the trains were coming again. But he had seen it all before and all he could say was "Maybe they will and maybe they won't."
LIKE MONUMENTS
Marva Williamsstill does her business beside the train tracks in Spanish Town. To her, right now, the tracks seem like monuments reminding her of her glory days the days she had an employer and wasn't running along the train lines sweating in the sun trying to sell a bottle of water.
Marva used to chase the early morning coach to get to work on time at the now defunct Kingston Free Zone. Then, she could plan her life and handle her business. Now, she is sweating in the sun beside her monument. "Tell the government to bring back the railway and build some factories inna Spanish Town. A nuff people siddung with nothing to do," she said.
Desmond Thomas from Steven Run in St. Elizabeth wants the trains to start running again too, but maybe he is asking too much. "The railway should never have been shut down. If them set it up back mi sure it would get off some of the traffic and big heavy truck them off the road. Send the cargo on the train and take some of the trucks off the road," he said.
Name changed on request. .
