An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

Gen­er­a­tions of Trinida­di­ans re­mem­ber the Red Bridge which spanned the South­ern Main Road at Plai­sance Park be­tween Pointe-a-Pierre and Clax­ton Bay. Be­fore the con­struc­tion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way, this was the main north-south road thor­ough­fare and thou­sands of peo­ple passed un­der this im­pos­ing ed­i­fice, which fer­ried the line of the Trinidad Gov­ern­ment Rail­way over the car­riage-road.

Al­though it was found­ed in 1876, it was not un­til 1879 that a se­ri­ous at­tempt be­gan at push­ing the rail­way to­wards San Fer­nan­do. The sug­ar cap­i­tal of the Na­pari­mas at that time was main­ly ac­ces­si­ble by the is­land steam­er. The sin­gle road con­nect­ing San Fer­nan­do with Port-of-Spain ran across the Grand Sa­van­nah, or Ca­roni Plain, with its bridge­less rivers, which were bare­ly pass­able in dry sea­son and com­plete­ly im­pass­able in the wet.

By 1881 the rail­way had touched Cou­va and was strik­ing out for San Fer­nan­do. The sec­tion where the line crossed the South­ern Main Road was sup­port­ed by mas­sive foun­da­tion piers made from fire­brick and lime mor­tar, which were need­ed for the large spans of steel cross­ing the road.Ini­tial­ly, the bridge was a sim­ple one with rails run­ning over two struc­tured steel box frames which were lat­er re­in­forced with riv­et­ed steel can­tilevers to give it the clas­sic "bai­ley bridge" ap­pear­ance.

The line then pro­ceed­ed to the Pointe-a-Pierre Rail­way Sta­tion at the Bon Ac­cord sug­ar es­tate, which is a struc­ture that can still be seen. Both the Bon Ac­cord es­tate and rail­way are now mem­o­ries and sit with­in the Pointe-a-Pierre oil re­fin­ery com­plex, which be­gan con­struc­tion in 1913.The red bridge brought many pas­sen­gers to the lit­tle sta­tion to vis­it ther­mal springs at Plai­sance.

In 1885 they were de­scribed as fol­lows: "Leav­ing Clax­ton's Bay you ap­proach Plai­sance es­tate (Messrs C Ten­nant and Co) on the left. Here is one of the most in­ter­est­ing cu­riosi­ties in the is­land, the ther­mal spring, or rather springs, for there are at least two dis­tinct ones. A bath­house has been put up, cov­er­ing two spa­cious con­crete baths. The clear spring wa­ter, ap­par­ent­ly like any oth­er till you be­come cog­nisant of its warmth, flows di­rect­ly in­to the baths from the hill­side, in just such a stream as might be poured from a buck­et.

The tem­per­a­ture of the wa­ter is from 100 to 105 de­grees Fahr. On the oc­ca­sion of my vis­it, by the cour­tesy of the man­ag­er, I was al­lowed to take a bath, which I found par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ant and sooth­ing, af­ter the first strange­ness of the un­usu­al warmth had sub­sided."

The springs silt­ed up and were for­got­ten al­though some lo­cal res­i­dents can point out the ru­ins of the con­crete baths in some bush­es in a very rough neigh­bour­hood. The red bridge served faith­ful­ly un­til the last train left San Fer­nan­do on Au­gust 30, 1965.The bridge con­tin­ued to be a land­mark un­til it fell vic­tim to our vi­cious as­sault on his­to­ry. It was dis­man­tled for no good rea­son in March 2010 and stored in the Min­istry of Works yard in Diego Mar­tin.