Tramp Royale by Robert A Heinlein

Author:Robert A Heinlein [Heinlein, Robert A]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-20T22:12:34.300000+00:00

The railroads in South Africa are atrocious, not because of equipment but because of management—sort of a Long Island Railway on a grand scale. True, the equipment could be better in many ways, but the real defect seems to be a total absence of any notion of traffic management. The bureaucrats who run it seem to have borrowed a slogan from an earlier, ruggeder day in American industry: "The public be damned!"

This weekend was the end of a school holiday; any traffic engineer owning a slipstick, having access to the records of previous years, and possessed of enough savvy to figure his own retirement pay could have predicted the service needed that weekend after finishing the morning paper and still have had time to take a long coffee break. But oh no! they had to run it like a game of musical chairs, with children left standing when the music stopped as an expected part of the game.

I have already noted that it was Sam's hospitality and Sam's Pontiac that got us out of Cape Town; all trains were booked solid three days ahead—with no intention of adding more equipment. The same conditions prevailed all over the country. Compounding the annoyance was the barely veiled insolence of Afrikander civil servants, an attitude of who the hell are you to even expect to ride our railroads.

I would have no right to complain if it were not that South Africa maintains tourist bureaus in our own country which publicize, among other things, how wonderful their railroads are.

Sure, sure, I'm just a sorehead tourist who could not manage to get on the train he wanted—but note this: South Africa has plenty of coal and exports it. But Cape Town imports foreign coal, it being cheaper to do so than to bring it down from the north. Inasmuch as the country has a markedly unfavorable balance of trade and the government has a firm policy of preventing the importation of anything at all where it can possibly be avoided, this one fact seems to me to underline the inadequacy and inefficiency of their railroads.

The same Transport Commission which runs the railroads also runs the bus lines and the air lines. Competition is intentionally eliminated.

Never mind—I admit that their railroads, or any railroads, are better than the means Allan Quatermain used. Mrs. Morgan drove us back to the hotel; during the ride I arranged with her for her to drive us to Johannesburg the following day. We checked back in at the hotel and went into the bar lounge. We were soaked through from a drizzling rain while standing on the station platform, exhausted from a long day in the bushveld, disappointed at not being able to board the train, and we each needed about two ounces of universal solvent in a tall glass to place a warm glow over our homesickness.

The bar was closed.

It was the first time we had run into the British Commonwealth customs of "hours." I have been assured by others

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