Photo Contest

My buddy and I joked one day about having a photo contest. The rules are pretty simple: take a photo that doesn't look like it's in Libya. Ex-pat compounds and the beaches are off limits. It has to be a photo in Tripoli of something that's out of place. It started after I showed him a photo of an undented car, driving mostly in its own lane, on a street with curbs (intact), and some trees in the background.

There's been a few others since then, but I think I may have to concede defeat after the last one. He took a picture of a fully functioning train in Tripoli, and I'm not sure I can ever top that. You're probably thinking a train isn't really that special. Afterall, there are trains everywhere throughout the world. Well, not in Libya. The closest thing to a railroad Libya has ever had was 50 years ago when the Italians built a series of small push-cart tracks at Leptis Magna and Sabratha to make it easier to steal large marble blocks from the Roman ruins and load them on boats to take back North.

Well, until a few days ago I would would have bet any amount of money there wasn't a train track anywhere else in the country. Apparently there is. As part of a "trial run" of what a rail line would be like in Libya, one of the goverment organizations here has built a fullsized 2km track behind their office.

When I first saw the photo, I thought it had to be a model train set he had found at the Road and Bridges Office. Nope, it's a real train. It runs back and forth from one end of the track to the other. That's right, they didn't build a loop, that'd just be silly. It's a straight piece of track. They run it down to one end, stop it, move the train engineers from one end to the other and come back.