"no matter how fast it rushed, the rails were always ready"
From "The Child in Time" by Ian McEwan, near the start of Chapter 3.
As a child he had once stood on a larger bridge with his father waiting for a train to come through. Stephen had stared at the receding lines and had asked why they grew together as they got further away. His father looked down at him, eyes narrowed, mock-serious, and then squinted into the distance where question and answer converged. He always seemed to be standing to attention. He was holding Stephen's hand, their fingers were interlaced. His father's were stubby, with matted black hair across the knuckles. In games he used to move his fingers scissor-like, clamping Stephen's until he danced with agony and delight at such irresponsible power. His father looked from the horizon to explain that trains got smaller and smaller as they moved away, and that to accommodate them the rails did the same. Otherwise there would be derailments. Shortly after that an express shook the bridge as it shot beneath their feet. Stephen marvelled then at the intricate relation of things, the knowingness of the inanimate, the deep symmetry which conspired to narrow the rail's gauge precisely in keeping with the trains' diminishment; no matter how fast it rushed, the rails were always ready.
