Silly After Action Report - African Brothers

Maggiore Guiseppe Limoncello gazed at his forces with approval.  When he had first taken command of these colonial troops they had shown a distressing tendency to engage in fire and movement, feel for an enemies flanks and filter through weakly defended areas of the front.  It had taken months of patient drilling to get them to gather together into unwieldy clumps and plod slowly towards the enemy.  Now he would be able to demonstrate how well his troops had learnt their lessons.  The colonial battalions would be attacking Moyale, the Gibraltar of Africa as it was never known, under the watchful eye of Generale di Brigata Matteo Gorganzoli himself.  Perhaps if enough of them died he might get a medal.

The sound of a novelty car horn split the air, Maggiore Limoncello threw his hands into the air instinctively and turned to find the source of the disturbance.  An Italian soldier gave him a cheery wave.  He was sitting on, well it looked like an upturned bathtub on wheels.

"What the hell is that?" demanded Limoncello.

"It's an upturned bathtub on wheels," replied the soldier, "but add a machine gun and its an armoured car.  We've got three of them, where do you want us?"

Limoncello pointed at the nearest road,

"How about there?  Just, sort of drive down that a bit and see what happens."

The soldier ripped off a smart salute,

"Most comprehensive briefing I've ever had.  We can move out immediately."

So this is ASL scenario J162, African Brothers where Ivan Kent attempts to defend the Kenyan town of Moyale from the conquering Italian legions commanded by yours truly.  To defend the indefensible Ivan has fourteen squads from the King's Rifled Africans, four second line and ten green.  To back them up he has wire, trenches, sangars, a pair of medium machine guns, an anti tank rifle, a small mortar and a trio of officers led by a 9-1 plus a dozen concealment counters.  On turn four he gets four second line squads as reinforcements egged on by an 8-1.  On the attack I have the pride of the Italian colonial troops in East Africa (ie anyone who would turn up).  I have twenty squads, ten bersaglieri and ten regular Italian first liners led by three officers (including my own 9-1) and a genuine Italian hero.  That's a counter that doesn't get much of an airing.  Additionally I have three light machine guns, one medium and one heavy.  For long range work I have my own little mortar and a 105mm gun.  Coming on to reinforce in the first turn are three ancient armoured cars although given the state of their armour perhaps a better term would simply be "cars".  Still one carries an 8FP machine gun and the other two 37mm cannon.

To win I have to capture a certain number of victory locations within a given time frame.  I need to achieve two of the following; i) capture 1 location point by turn 2, capture 3 location points by turn 5 or capture 4 location points by game end.  There is one victory location on board 62 within easy reach.  There are four victory locations on the hill summits of board 5a and the stone church on board 5a is worth a massive three points.  Grabbing the closest one seemed an appropriate start and would also set me on the way to seizing the church for another three.  I set up a powerful force, including my gun and mortar on the board 61 hill and detailed a second force (accompanied by the hero) to come on the north edge of board 62 for a little flanking.  By SSR the orchard hexes were actually vineyards and bog terrain which seemed to restrict my armoured cars to the road.

Set up

Things went rather well to begin with.  Ivan had only a token defence forward to cover the first victory location mostly consisting of dummy stacks.  This left the kill stack I had built with two squads, the mmg, hmg and 9-1 with very little to kill.  Since the machine guns were rather heavy this mob would spend the rest of the game panting towards the battle which always seemed to be a little out of reach.  Still I hustled forward and plunged (somewhat nervously) into close combat with the genuine squad he had defending the first victory location.  My only serious casualty came when I idiotically waltzed a squad right down the road in front of his defenders.  The conscript halfsquad which were the only survivors spent the rest of the game hiding in a vineyard.

Still everything else went well, my northern flankers pushed through the brush and vineyards, breaking a green squad along the way and rendered Ivan's forward position such as it was untenable and the victory location was mine.  The armoured cars trundled down the road and got ready to assault the church where the real fighting would happen.  Meanwhile my southern flank was crowned with unexpected success as well.  The forward location and the church weren't enough.  I needed to gain at least one of the hill hexes as well and I had a force in the south which I envisaged would slowly ease their way forward against the pair of squads in sangars that Ivan had ready for such an eventuality.  Instead a lucky prep fire shot broke one of the squads and I was able to hustle forward and chase him out of his defended positions down there with minimal casualties.

Unexpected triumph in the south.  Ivan's forward squad is not long for this world

With two victory locations seized before the end of turn 2 I had satisfied one victory condition.  Now I had to try and get another one.  Unfortunately the cheap gains were over.  Ivan had a squad with a mmg in a trench up on the hill guarding the next victory location closest to my flankers in the south while in the north I would edge my troops forward towards the church doing my best to take advantage of cover and only occasionally wandering into his line of sight in open ground.  There were a fair few Italian casualties but I was also taking prisoners as Ivan's outlying forces surrendered to invincible Italian arms (no really) which gave me the opportunity to deploy some squads.

pushing left and right

As expected Ivan had garrisoned the church strongly with a pair of second line squads, his 9-1, an mmg and the atr.  Most irritating was a green squad hiding in a sangar just in front.  These bastards sneaked out in the advance phase, ambushed one of my squads, killed half of it and then withdrew back into the sangar.  Nevertheless retribution was approaching.  One of my armoured cars tried firing at his troops in the church and only succeeded in running out of HE for it's 37mm.  The other one would similarly run out before much longer.

In the south I was attempting to keep my flanking manoeuvre going, sneaking behind the hill mass and trying to get close to his mmg position.  To help this out I pounded the position with both my mortar and the 105.  At that range and with an early morning mist LV in effect the odds of hitting weren't great but I figured simple repetition would eventually yield a result.  I was wrong.  The one hill location I had gained would be all that I got.  Part of the problem was that while I had got past him on the right and left he still had forces in the centre which I had been forced to largely ignore.  These guys were able to at least menace any direct movements and force me to move slowly and with circumspection which didn't stop Italian casualties mounting at an alarming rate.  Actually both sides were losing troops rapidly, blood was being poured into the soil out of all proportion to the actual value of the objective.  

 With time for the second victory condition starting to get tight I pressed forward with my armoured cars.  I was sure some of his defenders were dummies and surely those that weren't wouldn't be able to resist shooting at such magnificent targets.  Thus my infantry might be able to get forward.  This sort of worked. My forward armoured car managed to break a squad of defenders and then forced his mmg squad to reveal itself by destroying the armoured car.  Since the mmg kept rate as a fire drawing exercise it left a little to be desired.  Meanwhile back in the rear my kill stack laboured slowly towards the battle secretly hoping it would all be over before they arrived (it was).

one armoured car down

As turn four rolled around I was in quite a good position on paper.  I had swept away most of his outlying defences around the church and was advancing slowly but purposefully on his mmg post up in the hills.  Unfortunately this had cost so many casualties that a brief pause had to be called while I attempted to bring up laggards and rally some broken units.  This went about as well as you might expect with Italian squads but I did get one or two back.  In the south I managed to get a concealed squad next to his mmg team but then Ivan brought on his reinforcements and shot them to pieces (with a 1+1 shot if you please).

Back around the church Ivan was bouncing atr rounds off my armoured cars without too much result and I was firing 37mm shells into the church with an equal lack of achievement.  I had gathered what I considered to be a sufficient force to beat up his guys in the sangar and plunged into close combat.  I rolled a snake eyes and generated a 7-0 leader which was handy as the 7-0 leader I already had there had recently been broken.

getting closer

Now with nothing but the troops in the church in my way I gathered a mass of mostly half squads to spread out and give Ivan a lot of worthless targets while simultaneously pressing forward through the vineyards to the building.  At this point Ivan's mmg decided to go on a rate tear, immobilised another armoured car and beat up some of my long suffering infantry.  I also managed to break the MA on my one remaining armoured car.  On the plus side my slow moving kill stack finally managed to creep up at least combat adjacent just in case the game dragged on into the later turns.

Turn five arrived.  If I could capture the church in this turn I would win automatically.  If not I would have to hang on for another two turns with a rapidly dwindling force and still capture at least two more points worth of locations.  They weren't going to come from the hills.  Ivan's reinforcements solidly held the centre position up there and I didn't have enough to chase them off.  It had to be the church.  Fortunately Ivan helped me out.  As is his wont he persisted in rolling threes which was my sniper number.  Justice was finally served when my sniper killed his 9-1 in the church and the squad with him failed the LLMC.  Ivan's troops in the church were reduced to a single squad albeit one armed with a medium machine gun.

Time for the last desperate charge

I had one armoured car left (albeit with a broken MA), it passed the independent movement die roll and I gunned it forward.  Ivan tried to hit it but these fiat jockeys were made of stern stuff and ignored the spray of bullets.  I sleazed him in bypass and moved up every available infantry unit I could.  This consisted of two squads, two half squads, a hero and two 7-0s.  I sent the lot into close combat.  They survived Ivan's fire and I had a 3-1 shot in CC for the game.  Close combat is not normally my friend but this time it came off and I cleared the church of living defenders.  My turn five ended with me holding five victory points enough to give me an automatic win which was good as hanging on to them for another two turns might have been problematic.  Thanks to Ivan for the game which was quite tense for much of the time with second rate troops breaking all over the place.  I very much doubt if either of us could have mustered a full platoon at the end.

It's always a pleasant surprise when I win

Maggiore Limoncello ordered his troops to attention and threw up a dramatically impressive salute as Generale Gorgonzoli strode forward.  His face was as black as thunder.  Behind him his staff had "oh Christ you've done it now" expressions on their faces.

"What," demanded the general in tones of outrage, "was that?"

Limoncello blinked, "Well sir, we attacked and..."

"Attacked!  Attacked!  Is that what you call it?  Moving through trees?  Taking advantage of folds in the ground?  And I'm pretty sure I saw a flanking movement.  Don't deny it.  I know a flanking movement when I see one."  Absolute disbelief registered on the faces of his staff.  The general yanked on one of the waxed points of his beard in outrage.

"Do you not know, you military neophyte, that when the Italian army attacks it walks slowly towards the enemy until it has taken enough casualties to justify surrendering with honour?"

"Forgive me sir but, we did sort of win," said Limoncello a little desperately.

This seemed to drive the general into a greater fury.  He waved a file approximately the same thickness as a telephone directory in the junior officer face.

"Do you know what this is?  This is my surrender speech, noting how we gallantly resisted to the last and exhausted every possible resource before reluctantly handing our weapons over to a vastly superior enemy.  I spent hours on it.  I got my sword specially cleaned so I could hand it over to the British commander.  Now you tell me the bastard's dead.  What am I supposed to do with it now?"  Gorgonzoli turned on his heel so abruptly that his staff surrendered and stormed off towards his staff car.  Limoncello turned back to such of his troops as had survived.

"Well I don't care," he muttered.  "I think you all did very well. And that flanking thingy, well done.  Good initiative."

His troops held a hasty conversation amongst themselves then one of their corporals stepped forward.

"Excuse me sir, we're all planning to desert to the British.  Would you like to come with us?"

"Give me five minutes to pack a bag."

Well That Was Brief

The miracle that is nature has been performing for me on my balcony like a second rate busker trying to gather meth money.  Over the past couple of weeks it has shown me the highs, the lows, the joys and the anguish that comprise the cycle of life through the medium of incontinent sky rats.

This story actually starts several years ago when I possessed a modestly sized stereo which came in a slightly larger stereo cabinet whose fundamental cheap and tackiness was offset by a black faux wood grain finish (I know, pretty classy shit right?).  The stereo went the way of all electrical equipment from the 1980, laughed into humiliated retirement by more recent innovations, but the cabinet hung around until I needed the space it currently occupied.  I placed it out on the balcony while I decided what to do with it.  OK, that's a lie.  I placed it out on the balcony in the hopes it would biodegrade before I had to go to the effort of carrying it downstairs and throwing it away.  So far it has proved annoyingly durable for something so flimsy.

And there the story should have finished.  Indeed there the story would have finished but for a sojourn to the chillier parts of the New World.  As you may be vaguely aware I recently took a trip to Newfoundland and some of the lower rent parts of the United States.  In my absence the pigeons that I normally chase off my balcony with curses took advantage of the reduced number of irritable humans to set up home in my stereo cabinet.

I returned from my trip to find pigeons cooing proprietarily over my cabinet.  Furthermore closer inspection revealed that a rather poor quality nest had been slapped together inside the cabinet and said nest contained a pair of eggs, presumably pigeon eggs.  I have to confess I was quite excited.  In a second the pigeons went from irritating disease bags that shit everywhere to irritating disease bags that shit everywhere who were going to be parents.  Since I provided the venue I figured I was entitled to be considered a stepfather or balcony father at the very least.

I did my best not to pester the pigeons too much although popping out from time to time to see if the eggs had hatched proved irresistible, as did posting updates on facebook with my exciting news.  If nothing else this has highlighted exactly how uneventful my life is under normal circumstances.  A week or two after the egg discovery my patience (and that of the pigeons) was rewarded with a pair of spectacularly ugly pigeon babies.  Once again I indulged in a positive orgy of facebook updates and compounded this by waving the photos under the nose of every friend, relative and work colleague who couldn't physically fight their way out.  

I think you know where this is going.  Anyway, last night I scraped two dead pigeon babies into a plastic bag and trotted them down to the garbage bins.  While I was there I noticed a couple of plump, healthy looking slugs.  I'm not going to photograph them, I'm not going to name them and I'm not going to mention them ever again.  With any luck they might survive the week. 

I find it amusing that The Lion King managed to explain the cycle of life without actually showing a single eviscerated gazelle.  In actual fact the cycle of life ends with death, at least for the cyclist.  From a non sentimental "poor baby pigeons" perspective this doesn't particularly worry me.  When people say that their ancestors live in them I simply assume they have multiple personality disorder and if nobody died the world would be pretty crowded by now.  But I'm not crazy about picking up baby pigeons and dropping them in the bin so possibly its time to get rid of my stereo cabinet and encourage the pigeons to breed elsewhere.

Tasmania - Where Men are Men and Snakes are Sluggish

Now that I have arrived back in my beloved homeland blinking with fatigue and desperately clutching a fuzzy puffin toy I needed to do a little professional housekeeping.  I contacted my employers and told them I would be back in the office soon; they asked that next time I tell them I'm leaving.  I contacted my parents and told them I had returned; they asked who I was and why I kept calling them.  Finally I contacted my Tasmanian correspondent in the hopes something of staggering import or sensational excited had happened in my absence that I could mine for a cheap and nasty blog entry on my return.

"You're kidding right?" demanded my correspondent in what I thought were unnecessarily surly tones.  Well I wasn't exactly kidding but I had, shall we say, asked more in the hope than the expectation.  Apparently the most exciting thing to happen in Tasmania was my correspondent almost stepping on a snake.  Now I'm well aware that Tasmania has snakes.  My correspondent's parents live next door to about 97% of them.  Normally, however, the snakes do their best to keep out of people's way.  This is because snakes are brighter than most of the people who live in Tasmania.  Apparently something has changed.

My correspondent was understandably aggrieved.  She had been innocently bushwalking and she wasn't even hung over.  She made that point with sufficient vigour to make me realise that under normal circumstances she probably wouldn't notice if she stumbled into the snake pit from Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Yet despite her uncharacteristic sobriety there this snake was, sprawled in the path of her shoe and not even making a token attempt to get out of the way.

The problem was the weather, apparently it hadn't been cold enough over Winter.  Yes, while I was shivering underneath enough blankets to build a three story house snakes all over Tasmania had been flicking their tongues out in irritation at the uncharacteristic warmth.  This meant that they hadn't been able to hibernate which, to be fair, is pretty much the only way to get through Winter in Tasmania.  My correspondent swears by it.  The lack of a season's worth of restful sleep has made the snakes hungry and irritable but also very slow.  That seems to be a bad combination for the snake, they're terribly hungry but unless something actually walks into their open mouth and dies of heart failure they're unlikely to get a decent meal.  None of which would have stopped the snake from sluggishly biting my correspondent to death if she hadn't been somewhat more alert than usual.

Fortunately for my correspondent, and sobriety challenged bushwalkers all over the Apple Isle, things will improve.  As the sun returns and things get warmer the snakes will get quicker, find something to eat and then start taking more care to get out of the way of humans stumbling through the bush.  In the meantime bushwalkers are advised to wear gaiters, sturdy boots and, oh yes, look where they're damn well going.

Incidentally at the top of this blog entry I mentioned a fuzzy toy puffin.  This isn't a gift for a friend's child.  It will have to be prised from my cold dead hands.

Travelling Hopefully - WTFAISDH Edition Part 3

My reckless and downright foolish assumption of helpfulness at Dallas proved to be an idiotic delusion.  Meal voucher, don’t be silly.  Accommodation, we ain’t paying for that shit.  As for my luggage it’s somewhere between Toronto and Sydney.  They assured me it would turn up in Dallas and would be on my flight to Sydney but I’ve learnt to take their promises with a grain of salt.  I asked if they could book me into a hotel which I would pay for.  They said they would try, they failed.  I did it myself in ten minutes.  When in doubt give the job to someone who might possibly give a crap.

Despite this wretched litany of failure it is only fair to note that the American Airlines staff did succeed in the only part of the task that was genuinely important.  They got me on a flight to San Francisco in time to catch the evening flight to Sydney.  They assured me that Qantas staff at San Francisco would get me on the Sydney plane.  We both had a good laugh at that and then I wandered off to find my impromptu accommodation.

How to describe my hotel in Dallas?  Mix faded grandeur with one of those old Hammer horror movies starring Peter Cushing and you’ve got the general idea.  It wouldn’t surprise me if Vincent Price was carving late staying guests up in the basement.  The place was enormous, ill lit and with aging but impressive decorations lurking in the gloom.  It had big rooms, long corridors and despite the fact that it was fully booked managed to appear deserted.  A non specific air of creepiness permeated the whole place.  You really wouldn’t be surprised to find the place surrounded by police tape or a team of priests performing an exorcism.  The bed was comfortable though.

There is a joke (which I shamelessly appropriated for a recent AAR) that a Finn’s definition of hell is sitting next to a stranger on the bus who insists on talking to you.  Having been ground zero for many tedious conversations over the years (and a couple of downright disturbing ones) this strikes me as being thoroughly sensible.  You can imagine my relief when the woman sitting next to me on the flight to San Francisco spent the entire time hiding under a blanket.  I have no problem with weird as long as it’s the sort of weird that doesn’t require input from me.

On an unrelated note I might have seen the Grand Canyon.  Or possibly not.  I definitely saw something canyonesque but we were flying over a rather lumpy bit of the United States at the time so it could have been a completely mundane canyon.  I’m finding it slightly ironic that I’m actually seeing more of the United States now that my holiday is supposed to be over than I did when it was happening.  And by mildly ironic I mean deeply annoying.

OK so it probably wasn’t the Grand Canyon after all.  Sorry.

Travelling Hopefully - WTFAISDH Part 2 Edition

An increasingly terse young man made repeated apologies for the delay of my replacement flight to Dallas and managed to sound slightly less apologetic each time.  It was a little difficult to hear him because he tended to make the apologies while the airport PA was announcing something else and another airport PA was translating a previous announcement into French.  As best I could work out the cause of the delay, or at least the latest cause of the latest delay was that another aircraft had elbowed aside our too gentle steed and taken its place at the loading gate.  There would be a brief pause while the planeherds wrestled it back to its stable.

Further delay was caused by the standard airline practice of gathering the feeble, the decrepit, the blind and the lame along with those quite clearly close to death and boarding them first thus causing a massive snarl up of other passengers.  I can’t help thinking that if they left these people until last there would always be a couple they wouldn’t have to worry about unless they had a refrigerated luggage space.

As we waited a woman next to me moaned that she had already been bumped off an earlier flight to Dallas.  I told her I felt her pain, then I told her to shut up, finally I told her to stop pestering me or I’d call the police.  Eventually all the human wreckage and coffin bait had been shovelled onto the plane and we were graciously permitted to occupy whatever space was left.

So I’ve finally done it; I’ve managed to leave Toronto.  My plane lumbered airward, destination Dallas.  Hopefully the helpful lady at the desk in Toronto has contacted someone equally helpful in Dallas who will provide me with food, accommodation and most importantly a boarding pass for the next leg of my journey.  If not I may have to take out Texan citizenship.

In anticipation of such an event I have used social media to contact the only friend I possess whose knowledge of Texas extends beyond the occasional passing reference in The Big Bang Theory.  She kindly sent me a list of things I could do in Dallas.  At least three of them were variants on the “escape from mortal danger” simulation.  Perhaps there should be a sign at the airport, “Welcome to Dallas, run for your life!”

The safety briefing was short to the point of being cursory and we were informed with a straight face that the seat cushions act as flotation devices.  If we go down over water we are apparently meant to disassemble the interior of the aircraft and then jump into the sea with a piece of furniture strapped to our back.  I wonder who will play me in the episode of Aircrash Investigations?  The phrase “death on impact” has never sounded so appealing.

Travelling Hopefully - What the Fuck am I Still Doing Here Edition

I signed off on my travel entries in the calm knowledge that all I had to do was get on a couple of planes, not prank the air marshalls and I would be home.  Technically this is still true.  The actual planes however have changed and as yet I haven’t got on any of them.  Instead I wander the corridors of Toronto airport like a slightly disheveled ghost doomed to haunt the spot where life finally seeped from my body.

It all started quite modestly, I padded obediently along to the remote outpost that my aircraft was to be launched into the sky from and sat down to wait.  Everything went well until about three quarters of an hour before we were due to depart.  Then it was announced that the flight would be delayed, not by much, just a little bit.  Still I thought I should just check our new arrival time with the lady at the desk to make sure there would be no problem making my connection.  At that point the Canadian version of all hell broke loose.  I guess all purgatory broke loose.

Not only would there not be enough time to make my connection but there wouldn’t have been even if the plane had been on time and even if there was there definitely wouldn’t have been enough time to make my connection in Dallas.  It was suggested that whoever arranged the booking was an idiot and may indeed have broken the law.  For the next twenty minutes the nice lady at the desk worked her keyboard like a concert pianist with ADHD.  Apparently loads of people are going to Australia at the moment.  The implication was that one of them wouldn’t be me.

After looking at options involving both Los Angeles and Philadelphia the best that could be arranged was an overnight stay in Dallas and a flight to San Francisco the next evening to pick up a night flight to Sydney.  Which would get me home a day late.  That’s all very well but now that flight has been delayed and I’m starting to wonder if Toronto airport is the punishment for all of the sins of my life.  Honestly I haven’t been that bad.

Travelling Hopefully - Training Edition

My train was due to leave Halifax at 1pm.  Some time after that it actually departed.  I was escorted to my cabin by a helpful attendant.  A little later the same attendant escorted me to another cabin with a working toilet.  For that relief much thanks.

Our long metal beast slid out of Halifax in the grey of the afternoon.  I made my way to the observation car and peered out at the gloom that was serving to conceal the countryside.  A helpful guide cheerfully announced what we would be able to see if we could see anything.  Somewhat more helpfully she also gave us wine and cheese.  There was a professional singer on the train and he entertained passengers in the lounge car that evening.  Fortunately I managed to avoid that.

We pounded down the tracks and into, then out of, Quebec City but I was asleep.  If you ask me what the place looked like I would have to say “the inside of my eyelids” which seems a silly design for a city.

I had to change trains in Montreal.  As we came in I saw my new conveyance sitting at the next platform.  Grabbing my bags I trotted hopefully across but before I could board an elite team of Canadian train guards crash tackled me.  This being Canada they managed to do it politely.  One of them took his foot off my head and, after apologising for the scuff marks, informed me that I couldn’t just get on the train, oh dearie me no.  I had to go upstairs, stand in a queue, display my ticket and wait for three quarters of an hour.  Then and only then, if I was deemed worthy might I be permitted to proceed back down the stairs and cross the hallowed portals of my economy class carriage.  Those travelling first class had to make a blood sacrifice and commit the soul of their first born to a life of servitude (seriously this is how Via Rail recruits it’s staff).

I saw a little of the Quebec countryside as we travelled, partly because it was now daylight and partly because it had stopped raining.  There seemed to be rolling fields, cute villages and the occasional clump of forest.  It was the countryside, what the hell do you expect me to say?  Eventually we got to a massive lake which was a sign we were getting close.  We made such good time that in order to maintain a reputation for tardiness the driver had to pull over for ten minutes to ensure we weren’t early.

The last time I left Cleveland I wanted to take the train but a late taxi driver coupled with the fact that he didn’t know where the Amtrak station was forced me to take a plane instead.  This time I was taking no chances.  I rose ridiculously early having ordered my cab for an equally early time and got to the station with forty five minutes to spare only to discover that in an attempt to be helpful Amtrak had contrived to make the train an hour late.  Thanks guys but we really need to coordinate in future.

I had to change trains in Buffalo or rather Buffalo–Depew.  The train doesn’t go all the way into Buffalo.  Depew is a village that is part of the greater Buffalo.  The train station is in what appears to be an industrial estate.  It’s a fascinating place to spend six hours waiting for a connecting train to Toronto.  Fortunately that one wasn’t late.

I definitely like rail border crossings though.  We piled off the train, got sniffed by dogs asked a couple of mildly personal questions by the border guards and we were through.  Niagara Falls railway  station looks somewhat nicer by daylight but not so much that you’d be encouraged to spend any time there.

And that’s it,  my trip is completed and all that’s left is to survive the flight home which is leaving in a few hours.