Really though, as I found out today, that's where the fun just begins. After that, the tracks are hedged with buildings and thorns and liie on gravel beds. But the first part is actually just buildings. I had to leave the tracks at several times, simply because cars don't often stop at defunct train tracks. In any case, they do an interesting series of acrobatics, involving switches and splits and places where it looks like it splits but it doesn't, and runs past fences with razor wire and barbs, runs between buildings and stores. It's a very interesting place. Here's a shot of it:
That's where it stopped being buildings and started being plants that really formed the boundaries for where the tracks were and weren't. Up until then, it's all just store after store, plastered with graffiti. Interesting sight, to be sure, but not very useful. Anyway, you can see two sets of tracks in that picture. This is because there WERE two sets of tracks that merged. Then they split again. Since one of them led the way into a barbed-wire fenced enclosure, I took the other path, and soon found myself here:
Bad photo, I grant, but that's looking back at the way I had come. Here's more or less the same spot, looking forward:
Better photo, and it gets the bridge, too. I really wanted to go further on the tracks, but the disappeared into the thorny plants that you can see in the pictures. I didn't really want to dig through the plants to see if they actually were there, so I left it and went back.
However, this was something of a bad idea. There was an entire other branch I could have started exploring. I'll have to name that, and I'll go back again next week and look into the possibility of exploring it.
Vancouver branch, over and out.
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