Rail roads and their tracks.

[Hay Dude]

That is really cool stuff. I cant believe how much railroad history is contained in so many towns & villages across the US.
In the picture below, you see the steel tube. It was used as a pipe for a stream crossing into a property that I farm hay on. The gentleman that owned the property passed away 2 years ago. He claimed that his father acquired this from a steam engine that rolled off the tracks and was scrapped about 100 years ago. I was skeptical because the steel looked like it was too thin for a boiler. But there is a railroad just 300 feet from this picture. In the early 1900s a steam locomotive also blew a cloud of sparks and burned their barn down. It was completely rebuilt and paid for by the Pennsylvania Railroad

 

[Peter 315]

If you could only go back in time... I talked to a old time farmer years ago and when he was a child they would walk the tracks and pick up the coal that fell off the train to bring home for the stove...

 

[Hay Dude]

If you could only go back in time... I talked to a old time farmer years ago and when he was a child they would walk the tracks and pick up the coal that fell off the train to bring home for the stove...

Yes! Very same farmer I mentioned above would do same!

 

[ArlyA]

If you could only go back in time... I talked to a old time farmer years ago and when he was a child they would walk the tracks and pick up the coal that fell off the train to bring home for the stove...

But we forget all the fires started along the tracks and people dyeing from lung disease from the burning of coal or in the mines. The engineer who rebuilt the BIG boy mentions that when he talked about its conversion to oil.

 

[s219]

We live out in the middle of nowhere, but 100 years ago our town (Toano VA) was a center of commerce in part due to the railway, and there is a ton of rail history here. Just a couple miles from our home, there is an abandoned building next to the tracks that used to serve as a mail drop/pickup. Story goes that mail bags would get hung on a hook for pickup and dropoff.

Back in the 1970s, my dad owned a former 1881 passenger train station in Forestville CT that he used for a business office. Since then it has passed along to other businesses, some who continued to restore it. As a kid, I remember watching the daily freight trains pass by. They would shake the whole building, which was perched on a steep bank over the Pequabuck River. I used to stick pennies out on the track to get smashed, and that never got old.

I never really paid attention to the architecture, but it was pretty spectacular inside and out for what was a simple prefabricated building (brought to site on rail in 1881). There were all sorts of interesting nooks and features, and the basement was really cool and spooky.

Forestville Station (1881) Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Forestville station - Wikipedia



(Photo from Jerry Dougherty, Wikipedia)

 

[the old grind]

If you could only go back in time... I talked to a old time farmer years ago and when he was a child they would walk the tracks and pick up the coal that fell off the train to bring home for the stove...

There's a line to MI's Tri City area (Bay City, Saginaw, Midland) that leaves coal along the East border of a former friend's pitch. We might gather a lb/mi, which seemed worth the walk.

Moss, I'm ~midway between Owosso and Fankenmuth. Do let me know if you visit either again, we could arm-wrestle for who buys lunch.

 

[MossRoad]

One that's on my list:

Age of Steam Roundhouse Discover the Glory Days of Railroading!

Was previously the private collection of an ex-railroad exec. He passed away a year or two ago and it has since been more open to the public. Unfortunately, they just closed operations (temporarily) due to the pandemic.

If I recall correctly, that's all new construction. Pretty impressive. I'd like to hit that one too, some day.

 

[MossRoad]

If you could only go back in time... I talked to a old time farmer years ago and when he was a child they would walk the tracks and pick up the coal that fell off the train to bring home for the stove...

My friend's dad told me when he was a kid during the depression, many people would put junk on the railroad tracks to make the coal shake off the trains when they went by. Then they'd gather the coal to heat and cook with. He said he often wondered if some derailments were caused by that, as people were doing it all over the country.

 

[MossRoad]

There's a line to MI's Tri City area (Bay City, Saginaw, Midland) that leaves coal along the East border of a former friend's pitch. We might gather a lb/mi, which seemed worth the walk.

Moss, I'm ~midway between Owosso and Fankenmuth. Do let me know if you visit either again, we could arm-wrestle for who buys lunch.

You win! I'll buy. :drink:

 

[the old grind]

You win! I'll buy. :drink:

OK, you buy lunch and I'll pick up you & the Mrs' hotel room and buy breakfast.

btw, decades ago I drove by the Berkshire fenced into a park seen going West out of Fort Wayne. (Bus 24) When I met a young fella at a Lansing Sam's club who said he was working with a Berk restore crew in Durand I asked if he thought it might be the one from Indiana. We kind of assumed so, but I've since heard otherwise that the Indiana 2-8-4 was/is Nickel Plate 765, not 1225, but is in restoration.

Pere Marquette and Nickel Plate Road ran on Berkshires.