Now the working of a single-line is entirely dependent on
the telegraph, and the oven-birds, with their misplaced zeal, were
continually interrupting telegraphic communication, so on the Great
Southern Railway of Buenos Ayres every single telegraph-post was
surmounted with a wooden box, mutely proclaiming itself the most
desirable building-site that heart of bird could wish for, and
silently offering whatever equivalents to a gravel soil and a southern
aspect could suggest themselves to the avian intelligence. In spite of
this these misguided fowls retained their affection for the
insulators, and the Great Southern had during the nesting season to
employ a gang of men to tear the nests down.
Unlike the majority of railways, both in North and South America,
which have adopted the 4 ft. 8-1/2 ins. gauge, the standard gauge of
the Argentine Republic is the Irish one of 5 ft. 3 ins., and the
reason of this is rather singular. In 1855, during the Crimean War, a
short railway was laid down from Balaclava to the British lines. The
firm of contractors who built this railway for the British Government
had constructed some three years previously a small railway in
Ireland, for which they had never been paid. They accordingly seized
the engines and rolling-stock, which, owing to the difference in
gauge, were useless in England.
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