The most impressive feature about the railway in Newfoundland is that it should exist at all. Twenty years ago the late Sir Robert Reid began to invade the trackless wilderness with an army of navvies, and in a very short time the iron horses went snorting and panting through the lonely woods and desolate tracts that form the vast interior of the island. Only a great mind could have surmounted the obstacles that confronted the undertaker of so gigantic a scheme. There were mountains and rivers to evade, stretches of water to bridge over, granite rocks to pierce, swampy land and thick forests to avoid, and last, but not least, the selection of a route that should be not only the best commercially, but also the best from the standpoint of picturesqueness.
From St. John’s, the starting-point, to Port-aux-Basques, the terminus, is a distance of 548 miles, and the journey is covered in about twenty-eight hours. The track is a narrow gauge, and the engines are not so large as the passenger engines of England; but over many sections of the track a speed of thirty-five miles an hour is attained. The route is very circuitous, some of the curves being so sharp that from your seat in the carriage you can see the engine and the first two or three coaches taking the curve.
The coaches--or cars, as they are called in Newfoundland--are like those in America. They are not divided into compartments to accommodate ten persons, five on each side; nor do you enter from the side of the car. You enter at the end, and take your seat with fifty or sixty other people. There is an aisle down the centre, with seats on either side capable of accommodating two passengers. You can walk down the aisle the full length of the train. There are a dining-car and a sleeping-car attached to the train, and there are also small compartments at one end of the cars reserved for the use of smokers. When the meals are ready in the dining-car, an attendant walks through each car to announce the fact to the passengers. You do not pay so much for the meal, but call for just what your taste requires, and pay for that only.
There are no ticket-collectors, as in England, whose duty it is to examine or collect your ticket; but, as in America, a man is kept on the train continually to perform those duties, and to announce the name of the stopping-places as the train approaches them.