Railroads in historical context: construction, costs and consequences • VOL III - 2013
the congested valley, between live rocks, primitive waters, cataclysms where the and the prevail. The mutation of movements in the “non-place” Foz Tua station, in or ance of the pointsman! While the song of the RTP Song Festival celebrates the Tua train and the people of Trás-os-Montes cross new and old paths: soldiers, students, couples, children, emigrants, restless handkerchiefs in departures and reunions. Between trolleys, railway ties, deactivated locomotive and warehouses, now object of reanimation in the active hands of many: the station manager, fore-
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as well as its last railway. The train’s “little land” path of the once deactivated line is followed with nostalgia, the , of the Trás-os-Montes soul on the other side of politicians’ accounts and the hospitality of the people that rush to the arrivals and departures at the stops and stations. The old construction of the as a “ ” and “ ” of many with shovels and pickaxes in their hands. There is huge of the train at unrestrained speed and emerge, the . The Tua river is drawn in poetry, lukewarm waters and stones and the , acrobat, with hopeful people inside, , rips through the core of the night, with noise on the line that contains a galaxy within, beyond the darkness of the and of the . of , between , wait for the train at the deserted stations and make the abandoned stops their homes, , , both imposing themselves as Represented as a leaning , the becomes the main character. Once more, , governed by the , and the of the construction of the line, amid the unafraid of death, by the initiative of blessed men of the Trás-os-Montes elite, of . In the general dispersion of fragments, the multifaceted evocation of the Tua Valley: river, line and train, and passengers absorbed in the , brief stops and and still the , since the immemorial date of the