KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The his­toric En­gine No 11, known by many as “The Last Train to San Fer­nan­do,” is about to get some com­pa­ny as the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion pre­pares to trans­form the area in­to its new fruit court.

The train on Har­ris Prom­e­nade in San Fer­nan­do is En­gine No 11, a 20-ton lo­co­mo­tive built in 1895 by Kit­son and Com­pa­ny of Leeds, Eng­land. It was orig­i­nal­ly part of the Trinidad Gov­ern­ment Rail­way (TGR) fleet and was over­hauled in 1924 be­fore be­ing placed on per­ma­nent dis­play at Har­ris Prom­e­nade in 1966.

Once a makeshift shel­ter for a street dweller, the en­gine now stands be­side a re­vi­talised space where booths have al­ready been in­stalled, and the neigh­bour­ing band­stand is re­ceiv­ing fresh coats of paint.

Ad­dress­ing the decades-old is­sue of street vend­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Statu­to­ry Meet­ing at City Hall, San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris said ven­dors who pre­vi­ous­ly oc­cu­pied the sheds out­side the old San Fer­nan­do Li­brary may now have a chance to re­turn. He lat­er told re­porters that the new fruit court presents a beau­ti­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty for bud­ding en­tre­pre­neurs, but every­one must ap­ply for­mal­ly through the cor­po­ra­tion.

There will al­so be space for leather work­ers and crafts­peo­ple who once op­er­at­ed along Chancery Lane be­fore re­lo­cat­ing to the Ro­driguez Build­ing. Par­ris said some of them have al­ready ap­proached City Hall with a plan to re­turn and es­tab­lish a pres­ence there.

Since as­sum­ing of­fice, Par­ris said, he and his coun­cil iden­ti­fied tourism, cul­ture, arts, sport and ed­u­ca­tion as key pil­lars for San Fer­nan­do’s de­vel­op­ment. The fruit court ini­tia­tive, he ex­plained, is part of that man­date—and the area has al­ready be­gun draw­ing at­ten­tion from tourists, who have been seen pho­tograph­ing the up­grad­ed site.

Par­ris said cre­at­ing struc­tured lo­cal eco­nom­ic zones and charg­ing ven­dors to op­er­ate in a clean, or­gan­ised man­ner should be sup­port­ed by all stake­hold­ers. He cit­ed Ari­ma as a mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty that has im­ple­ment­ed a sim­i­lar mod­el.

Each ven­dor will be re­quired to pay $500, which will be de­posit­ed in­to the cor­po­ra­tion’s con­sol­i­dat­ed fund and used for the on­go­ing main­te­nance of the vend­ing area.

Par­ris al­so re­vealed plans to in­stall shut­ters on the band­stand, not­ing that po­lice of­fi­cers are fre­quent­ly re­quired to re­move home­less in­di­vid­u­als who fre­quent and sleep there.