At first reading I didn’t think that this was much of a news item, delayed train, ants… whatever…..
Portland Guardian-5 Feb 1934 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article64284801
Then I thought of how many ants it would take to make a train slip on its tracks and I thought again.
Think of the largest amount of ants you have ever seen in one place, and then imagine what they could have done to hinder a train. Not much I suspect.
To actually stop a goods train would take an immense amount of ants! I wonder what sort of ants they were. We have some pretty big ants here in Australia, Bull ants (40mm), but still I can’t imagine how many of them it would take to cause an incident like this.
I wouldn’t have wanted to be in that train either. Ants aren’t generally too easy to move on, are they? I can imagine they would be swarming all over the train, furiously annoyed at the disturbance, and if they were Bull ants….. eeeek!
Hm, do you suppose this was the inspiration for the story “Leiningen Versus the Ants”?
I hadn’t heard of that story before but thanks to you I found this homemade claymation movie about it “Ten miles long, two miles wide—ants, nothing but ants!” That is a lot of ants!!
I love the crocodile scene in this short 🙂
A delay of about a quarter of an hour… doesn’t even rate by Cityrail standards!
True. I think 15 minutes late is still considered on time for Metro trains 😉
The thing is, if you stop to try and get rid of the ants, they swarm over you, climb into the train and get everywhere else. We have fire ants here, and their nests can hold 100,000 or more of the little stinging devils. I’d hate to have to get out and take care of an issue like this were it an ant like that.
I think even the most harmless ants would be a problem in those numbers but biting ants like fire ants, OW!
Just imagine what the rest of the trip might have been like for the passengers? The train was moving but there may well have been some unwelcome guests making their presence felt. The end of that trip would have been a relief wouldn’t it!
And even if there weren’t any ants aboard, everyone would have been constantly looking down at their feet, or along the side panels, worried that they were about to be overrun. The experience must have done wonders for the train company’s marketing efforts, too.
Both of my AUNTS delayed a lot of things, but.. ants? Wild!
I guess it wouldn’t take too many Aunts lying on the tracks to stop a train 😉