Released on = October 9, 2006, 4:14 pm

Press Release Author = John Gaudet/Brandylane Publishers

Industry = Entertainment

Press Release Summary = The Railroad to Nowhere was a $700 million line item
proposed by Mississippi\'s powerful Senate delegation in the emergency spending bill.
It didn't work, but it reminded us of the Victorian railway in Africa called the
Lunatic Express. Justified as a way to combat emergencies, it even cost the same
amount. A new novel by John Gaudet, The Iron Snake, due out this fall from
Brandylane Publishers, Richmond VA, is based on the saga of this African railroad
and the people affected by it.

Press Release Body = The tag line, "Railroad to Nowhere," caught on recently when
Mississippi\'s powerful Senate delegation attempted to slip a line item into the
emergency spending bill for $700 million. The largest earmark in history was to
support a plan to rebuild a freight line along the Gulf Coast to allow the state
instead to use the right of way for a new highway. Not so far back in history a
parallel can be found in the "Lunatic Express," so wonderfully described by Charles
Miller in a book of that name. Also known as the "Lunatic Line" by the tabloids of
the day, it was conceived of in order to confront an emergency. Does that argument
sound familiar? But in 1894 it was neither Katrina nor Iraq; the subject was a
railroad from the East African coast at Mombasa to Lake Victoria in the interior.

The case was put by Sir Gerald Portal in a report to the British Parliament.
All the right reasons were there, the need to ensure protection of the
source of the Nile from Britain's enemies, a great potential market for
British goods, the huge traffic expected, and a revolutionary effect in
settling the region. Not far off from Mississippian hopes this year to turn
the struggling Gold Coast into 'Las Vegas South,' and provide a safe passage
for rail cargo during hurricanes and floods.

Like the Mississippi earmark, political resistance to the 1894 venture
surfaced immediately, including the Liberals pronouncement that the
Government had no right to drive a railway through country owned by the
Masai. And by what right did England have to assert mastery over thousands
upon thousands of unlettered African tribesmen? Such arguments along with
the claim that it would be a waste of taxpayers' money were easily brushed
aside with a grand Tory flourish, after all if England were to step away
from its manifest destiny, they would by default leave it to other nations
to take up the work which England would be seen as ".too weak, too poor, and
too cowardly to do ourselves." Not far from what Trent Lott would come up
with perhaps in a pinch.

And the cost? Estimated at 3 million pounds in 1894 or $432 million in
today's currency, which, when near completion in 1902, had climbed to -
guess what - 793 million dollars!

Did it deserve the moniker, Lunatic Line? The wild nature of it - shaky
looking wooden trestle bridges, enormous chasms, prohibitive cost, hostile
tribes, men dropping by the hundreds from diseases, and man-eating lions
pulling railway workers out of carriages at night - Lunatic Line seemed to
fit. However, an early traveler, Winston Churchill, had the last say, "The
British art of 'muddling through' is here seen in one of its finest
expositions. Through everything - through the forests, through the ravines,
through troops of marauding lions, through famine, through war, through five
years of excoriating Parliamentary debate, muddled and marched the railway."


This fall Brandylane Publishers, an independent press in Richmond, VA, will
publish "The Iron Snake," a new novel by John Gaudet based on the saga of
this railroad and the people affected by it
(brandylanepublishersinc@yahoo.com, $16.95 plus shipping, $5.95).

By the way, the railway is still in use today. The Kenya Railways
Corporation runs passenger trains between Mombasa and Nairobi, leaving in
the evening and arriving the following morning after a journey of around 13
to 14 hours.


Web Site = http://www.brandylanepublishers.com

Contact Details = Media contact: Brandylane Publishers, 5 South First St. Richmond,
VA 23219
Mary Tobey, Publicist or Robert Pruett 804.644.3090; FAX 804.644. 3092
or rhpruett@brandylanepublishers.com

For details about the book: see www.theironsnake.com