It occurred to the contractors that
they might utilise this material by building the Crimean Railway to
the Irish gauge of 5 ft. 3 ins., and they accordingly proceeded to do
so. Two years after the Crimean War the same firm secured the contract
for building the first railway in the Argentine, a short line,
twenty-one miles long, from Buenos Ayres to the River Tigre. As they
considered that their Crimean rolling-stock was still in good order,
they obtained permission to build the Tigre Railway to the Irish
gauge, and these much-travelled coaches and engines which had started
their railway career in Ireland, were shipped from the Crimea to the
Plate, and eventually found themselves, to their vast surprise,
rolling between Buenos Ayres and Tigre. The first time that I was in
Buenos Ayres, in 1883, two of the original Crimean engines were still
running on this little railway, the "Balaclava" and the "Eupatoria,"
the latter re-christened "Presidente Mitre." The newer railways
followed the lead of the pioneer, and so it comes about that Ireland
and the Argentine Republic have the same standard gauge.
The vast solitudes of Espartillar were within eight hours of Buenos
Ayres, three by wagon and five by rail, so it was possible to wander
out one night to the star-lit camp, where the silence was only broken
by the screech of an occasional night-bird, or the beat of the wings
of myriads of flighting ducks, without the slightest trace of man or
his works perceptible in the great, grey, still, unpeopled world, and
to be sitting the next night in evening clothes in a garish,
over-gilt, over-decorated restaurant, humming with the clatter of
plates and the chatter of high-pitched Argentine voices, as a noisy
string-band played selections from the latest Paris operette.
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