Accidental Tourist: The stationary train

A Grahamstown expat experiences déjà vu with a difference while taking part in an odd piece of theatre at the city's art festival

TO set the scene: rewind to the early '50s, when I spent four years at boarding school in Grahamstown. Three times a year, as soon as the end-of-term service finished, hordes of schoolboys would descend on the station, buoyed by the prospect of going home, and for some, the more immediate pleasure of having a smoke as soon as the train started moving and authority was temporarily suspended.

The "way in" led through the booking office and onto Platform One, where we would "cross the line by the bridge only" - all of these signs in both the official languages of the time - and scramble to find our compartments, with bookings quickly reorganised to ensure one could travel with one's mates. The station was a hive of activity: conductors trying vainly to marshal over-excited schoolboys, trunks being flung into the guards' van by porters shouting the names of their destinations, and from the distant locomotive sheds, the evocative sound of engines blowing off steam and eager to get us on our way.

At last our two engines - coupled-together in a pair - panted slowly past us on their way to the head of the train, their fireboxes glowing and black smoke swirling around us as the firemen "made ready" for the long haul to Alicedale.

At 8.26pm exactly, the Stationmaster gave the "right away", two whistles pierced the night, the platform slipped away and we moved slowly through the suburbs before tackling the first steep gradient to West Hill on the long ascent to Highlands siding. The hubbub on the station died down and the "City of Saints" disappeared into the darkness - until next term.

Fast forward now to July 2009 and the National Arts Festival, where Brett Bailey - who loves the theatre but doesn't believe in performing in it - invited participants to a "site specific" piece entitled The Terminal, the only injunction being to come to the station "warmly dressed and with walking shoes".

With the last train having run in February 2009, the station buildings were an eerie sight: the entrance and windows barred and shuttered and only a rusting Garratt steam engine on a turntable serving as a reminder of its heritage. At 6pm the "Way In" door opened and 30 or so souls were ushered into the waiting room, given a playing card, seated on "Europeans only" benches and told to keep silent. The signs of yesteryear were still there - and still in both official languages - "Reservations", "Departing at.", "Arriving at.", "Tickets" - but, "the rest was silence" and the benches cold and uninviting. In the background, Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs played hauntingly over the station's loudspeakers.

Cards were called at three-minute intervals, the bearers ushered onto the dark platform with a further instruction not to talk. Mine was the last to be called, which heightened the sense of desolation. As I passed through the door, a township child materialised out of the darkness and took my hand, leading me slowly past a variety of tableaux depicting the dispossessed in various forms. As we again "crossed the line by the bridge only", we looked down upon a vast pile of rubbish, where some human forms could dimly be seen scratching among the detritus. Reaching the "departure" platform, I looked in vain for traces of the past's activity, but only three or four figures lying in cardboard boxes were there, softly singing a Xhosa lament.

Clasping my hand more tightly, my companion led me quickly through the entrance to the adjacent cemetery, where two shadowy figures sat silently at the gate. We hurried past the graves to a fire around which more figures were seated, and finally back towards the station, crossing the now-derelict line running down to Port Alfred. A quick squeeze of the hand and my escort was gone as quickly as he had materialised, leaving me to contemplate my experience next to the rusting engine.

It was not a comfortable one: sadness both for a part of the past that could not be recalled, and more so for the ongoing plight of the dispossessed, most of whom still live in the same "township" that could be distantly seen from the lofty confines of our school over 50 years ago.

The more things change ... © David Alston