Entry 17: What a load of rubbish

Every Sunday morning, faithful citizens in the Oak River region meet at the Church of St. Raphael. Every Sunday morning they read the hymns and readings from printed sheets of paper and every Sunday morning they throw the pieces of paper in the bin. Apparently, the doctrine of stewardship hasn't quite made it to this church.

Unfortunately, there was no-one to empty the bins and so the local area became strewn with litter and what was once a desirable place to live became infested with rats, ants, cockroaches and other unwelcome neighbours.

Since this was not the only place in the area to have rubbish problems the council decided to do something about it. The council members were not very imaginative however and decided that the best solution would be to move it away from civilization. The only suitable place was in an area of `The Hand ', a region shaped a bit like a pointing hand. A landfill was constructed and soon started to fill up.

This was clearly only a temporary measure, so the council better start thinking of new ways to deal with the unwanted side-affects of daily life.

Entry 16: Will you start the taps, please.

Despite being separated politically into Townships, the individual villages still had some degree of autonomy.

Early in 1921, local councillors in Dartacre were pondering fire protection. Up until now, residents put out fires using bucket chains from the river. As the village grew, the fire risk became greater and so the local council decided to think about investing in a fire service. Unfortunately they discovered that fighting fires would be impossible without water.

They discussed all this with the other villages within the townships, but the cost was too much for the others. As a larger settlement however, Dartacre was able to raise the extra revenue to build a water distribution service that would only encompass itself.

Dartacre's groundwater was heavily polluted however from agricultural chemicals and so they had to build the pumping station out of town.

The local residents of this unaffiliated neighbourhood did not mind since the got a free water supply in turn.

Entry 15: Chugging along

And so it was, in the Summer of 1920 that Jim Steinbach finally completed his railway at almost ruinous cost. The route stretched from Dart River to Sarah's Cove and primarily conveyed freight. Unfortunately, due to the enormous cost of the project his services weren't that cheap, but they were cheap enough for large businesses to transport bulky goods.

For smaller businesses the railway was not yet cheap enough to use, so they had to stick with Bob Ribblesand's barge company. Luckily for them though, Mr Ribblesand had lost all of the large business and was forced to reduce his prices to encourage the smaller businesses to use his services more.

Jim Steinbach's railway operated this type of steam train for both freight and passengers. It was a Norman B20.

The picture of the train was taken during testing before they decided on a right hand drive for the tracks. Below is the train in action.

Let's take a look over the new track. It starts out at Dart River where there are separate passenger and freight terminals before a short trip to Dartacre.

The track moves on the new village of Twin Tracks. This village is owned entirely by the railway company as a major source of income from rent to help offset some of the costs of building.

The tracks travel through the outskirts of Sarah's Cove before ending up at the port at Fisher. This is where most of the expense was. The earthworks for the raised track and bridge were very costly for the company.

Jim Steinbach hopes that his company will make a long-term profit. Only time will tell.