Snow business like slow business

For a country that prides itself on having brought democracy and railways to a quarter of the planet’s surface – indeed probably more through the financing deals which opened up rail links in South America and Asia beyond the immediate sphere of influence of a local governor or other – this serves as a definite route to tut-tutting and shaking of the head. One cannot but wonder by what magic of the laws of physics a 25-tonne carriage on wheels cannot urge its way up a shallow gradient because of the interference of a few solidified molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. Assuming, of course, ...