Single track
evergreen · planted 2022-09 · tended 2024-11
The railway of Irad is one pair of rails from end to end. No second line, no parallel track. Two trains going in opposite ways can only meet where there is a loop, a short stretch of second track at a station. So every day is a game of timing: you must get each train to its loop before the other one arrives, and nobody may be forgotten.
If one train is late by twenty minutes, the other one waits at the loop, and then the next train too. A delay on a single track is like a stone in a river: the water behind it rises. See Passing loops and Loop No. 17.