House of Evidence(50)

Opposite the gun cabinet was a model of a railroad station on a low table. It was not a toy, but a near-perfect replica of the buildings and equipment one would need to run a railway. Tiny letters on the railway carriages read “Iceland Railroad Company Ltd.”

He went back into the parlor and checked under the sofa cushions; even here there was no dust. He looked into the fireplace and peered up the flue. A faint burned odor could be detected, and as he rummaged around with the poker, he could see a thick layer of soot on the slabs of the hearth and that the ventilator grill was in the open position. The fireplace had clearly been used frequently.

Then he carried the dining chair that stood forlornly in the middle of the parlor floor back to the dining room. The rooms looked far better with the chair back in its place at the big dining table. Jóhann examined the sideboard carefully, looking inside, under, and behind it, where he found a Christmas card from 1965 that seemed to have fallen down there and been forgotten. The greeting was to Jacob Junior and his mother, from Ingimar and family.

The kitchen was fascinating. Ancient, battered utensils hung on the walls; they had probably not been used for decades, but it was interesting to see what housewives from the first half of the century had to put up with.

There was nothing of note in the inner lobby apart from the telephone table and, beneath it, the newspaper rack, whose contents they already knew about.

In the outer lobby there was a door leading to a small guest bathroom, and another into the engineering studio. In the bathroom, the fixtures were of the same generation as elsewhere in the house, and everything was clean and shining; the toilet had a varnished wooden seat, and from the cistern high up on the wall dangled a chain with a porcelain handle. Jóhann took off his shoes before stepping up onto the toilet lid in order to peep into the cistern, but there was nothing unusual there.

Jóhann found the engineering studio most interesting of all. He could sense that a scientist had worked here. The drawings, the equipment, and the instruments were fantastic collector’s items. He examined the drawing of the railroad station that hung on the wall, and recognized immediately the same structures shown in the model in the office. He went through cabinets and drawers, and spent a long time looking at drawings and other materials. He found a file containing press cuttings about the railway, including a magazine article by Jacob Senior. Jóhann sat down and read:



The Railway, by Jacob Kieler, engineer, written in June 1920.



There is increasing interest in harnessing mechanical power to the maximum for the facilitation of labor of all kinds, not least as regards the transportation of goods, as is evidenced by the ever-growing importation of automobiles. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to assume that greater support now exists for the mechanical transport method considered by most people to be the safest and most productive, that is to say the railway. It is clear to all thinking people that the automobile will never achieve a level of efficiency to make it possible to rely solely on that particular technology. With the arrival of the railway, it will naturally follow that the commercial transportation of goods and people by automobile will be prohibited on those routes served by the railroad.

The proposed railroad is intended to link Reykjavik eastward to the lowlands of southern Iceland. Surveys show that arable land in the lowlands in the south extends to 2,372 square kilometers, equivalent to more than a fifth of all arable land in Norway. The value of a railroad connecting this region to the world at large is, therefore, incontrovertible. It has been calculated that the price of milk will be reduced by a quarter on arrival of the railroad.

Over the past year, a survey has been carried out of all traffic along the Thingvellir Road and across Hellisheidi. These roads are far from being of quality, yet it transpires that the traffic is incredibly heavy, with 28,000 people crossing Hellisheidi, along with 5,000 tons of goods and livestock.

There has been much discussion on the gauge of the railway. This must be coordinated over the whole network so that the same type of rolling stock may be used throughout, and, rather than having to transfer freight between wagons, it will merely be necessary to attach previously loaded wagons to a train. In this discussion it is very important to strike a balance between excess and parsimony, as not only must the main tracks have sufficient capacity to meet all potential transport needs for the unforeseeable future, but one must also give due consideration to the construction costs of both main and prospective branch tracks.

Electricity would be the most practical motive power for the rolling stock. The main advantages are these: Electric cars run more evenly and are more stable than steam locomotives; they therefore create less stress to the infrastructure and are less likely to derail even at high speed; they are ready to go at a moment’s notice while steam locomotives take a long time to fire up; and they have both acceleration and deceleration rates that are twice those of steam locomotives, making for a quicker journey when railroad stations are close together.