I picked this book up while on holiday in New Zealand‘s Coromandel region, after the family and I had just been on author Barry Brickell‘s incredible home-made train ride. It was his life‘s work to build an amateur railway through the rugged and steep terrain of his piece of land. Initially, to transport clay for his pottery business, but eventually he realized how attracted people became to this narrow-gauge self-made little train.
Over the better part of his 80 years on earth, he built and optimized the rail. I sat on that thing, excited as a little boy just before Christmas, mouth dropped open, enjoying every second of it. The book details everything about the history of this private project turned tourist attraction. It reminds me a bit of a long, descriptive blog post, not unlike the ones I posted here. By that I mean the poor quality writing – which isn‘t the most important thing. It‘s the content.
Diving down into Barry‘s humble life-long project took me out of this world every time.
Leave a Comment