I know it’s been awhile since I’ve done any updates, but, a lot has happened since my last post. First, I had to take a break on traveling until I got new tires, changed oil and brake pads for my car. Shortly after those were fixed, Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays were declared days of no movement. This meant that I, and the rest of the island, had only Saturday to rush and get whatever groceries were left on the shelves. Once we got back Sunday, Monday and Tuesdays, I had to go and get my car fixed again, this time, it was the CV joint that needed replacing. AND THEN on top of all of that I got covid. (I’m all good now though). I’m still not out of the clear as yet seeing as I still have to go get my CV joint fixed but I think I can safely say I’m past the worse now. If things continue on this trajectory, I should be able to visit the string of stations between Bog Walk and Annotto Bay. After that, early in the new year maybe, I can then take a look to see what’s left of the abandoned railway between May Pen and Frankfield. And then finally, I would just have the stations between Kendal and Montego Bay left to visit. Still don’t know the details on that as yet, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

So that brings me to some stuff I have been working on while locked in the house. First is establishing what to do once I finally visit all of the railway stations. You see, up until now, this blog has been observation based. Basically I look at a train station, say “oh that’s neat” take photos and try to intertwine a bit of history in there. At some point I’m going to run out of things to look at and what I want to dive into next is what lead to the downfall of the JRC and what have been the hurdles in reviving passenger service. As you can imagine, this type of information cannot be gathered by me simply driving around and saying “Ah yes, this level crossing is why Jamaica has no passenger rail service” it’s gonna be a lot of interviews, digging and educated assumptions. It doesn’t help that some of the JRC records have been damaged multiple times, whether from fire, earthquake or time. So of course that means it’s going to take me some time to get connect all of the dots.

The next item I have been working on is a little less intricate. It’s more or less the same “observe and notate” thing I’ve been doing for railway stations, but instead for locomotives. (Just for those out of the loop, the locomotive is the part of the train that does the moving, sometimes pushing, most times pulling, occasionally both.) just for those out of the loop. I should have up an article on what I’ve found so far by the latest next week. The good thing is that it’s going to be pretty short. I have most of the information and what I’ve seen so far is that 3/4 of the locomotives were scrapped.

So ye, that’s been the update. Here’s to more content coming soon