Historical Scars

At the peak of railroading in the United States, over 250,000 miles of track crossed the continent (source: ICC).  More than 180 Class 1 Railroads were operating by 1930 (AAR).  The next 80 years would see a dramatic reduction in these numbers, brought about through rationalization of duplicate lines, corporate mergers, and outside pressures like affordable air travel and the Interstate system.

Often left behind are remnants of these original companies and rail lines.  They exist in large cities and small towns alike.  Dearborn Station in Chicago still stands, but the multitude of railroads that used it daily are gone as are the tracks and station platforms.  Shops and a small park now take their place.  Countless abandoned grain elevators still dot small towns where tracks used to connect them.  A few still offer storage and service via trucking, but more are just silent hulks.  Large or small, these are relics of that railroading peak 80 years ago.

Between the towns and cities lie other remembrances:  the landscape scars.  They are a cut that still exists in the side of a hill, or tunnel that gapes darkly at the surroundings.  A small bridge over a little creek, or gravel atop a culvert.  Line side poles sometimes follow these scars along, although time has brought many down one way or another.  They are not always obvious - it's easy to quickly drive by these disturbances in the land without giving a second thought.  Many have also been tilled into surrounding fields or simply overcome by the vegetation that surrounds them.  Nature continually works to rework and reclaim.

The picture above is the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Coast Extension, just east of Rosalia, WA.  Here, the poles are in place and the cut in the side of the Palouse hill nicely marks the line traced out in the early 1900s.  Old tunnels and bridges abound nearby as the line sets its sights on the Bitterroot Range just to the east.   These are the historical scars that mark some part of the way things used to be.  Things weren't always better, but they were different.  From big city stations to cuts in the hillsides, they're good reminders of what went before.

Comments

SDP45 said…
Just drove through Rosalia yesterday. Its still a wonder that the whole Milwaukee is gone. I must add that as I drove through the Palouse, the GN/SC&P/S&IE is all gone, and bits of the NP are gone. All that capacity is gone due to the nearby ports at Lewiston, ID. All those towns which once longed for rail are slowly disappearing Today's railroading has its challenges, as the Washington & Idaho was suffering through a derailment just south of Spangle.
9/13/2011 03:59:00 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rock-a-bye bye bye?

Image
There are footnotes to history and there are chapters. Dependent on your perspective, sometimes those footnotes deserve a book unto themselves. As the economy sagged in the seventies, railroads were hit hard. The East saw a general collapse in the form of Penn Central. As the seventies wore on, the PC would be combined with several other bankrupt roads to form Conrail, a government backed corporation who's sole goal was to save rail transportation in the eastern half of the country. Collapse worked its way through the western lines during these years as well. The Milwaukee Road pulled out of the West just over 30 years ago at the beginning of March. Bankrupt and reeling, its retreat to the Midwest would last only a few more years until its absorption by Soo Line. Its competitors in the West and Northwest managed to hang on, but healthy balance sheets were not to be found in the board rooms of the Cascade Green lines in those years. The Rock Island had a long flirtation with...
Read more

The Place Where She Only Sleeps

Image
 Location: MP 1566.8 Grant-Kohrs Ranch Not far from Deer Lodge, headed west on the transcon we arrive here, at Grant-Kohrs Ranch where the Resourceful Railroad only sleeps.  Instead of empty right of way and scattered gravel, steel rail still binds the land in this place that is unlike the many other hundreds of miles along Lines West.  Across the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, on federal Park lands, the railroad only seems to rest and slumber while waiting for a new time to come.  Against the backdrop of Montana clouds that hold no rain, the catenary poles can still be found here standing against the endless skies.  The lineside poles that mark an era of railroading now gone still hold to the right of way.  It is not hard to imagine them whipping by outside the windows of an Olympian under the electrified power of a Quill or Joe.  Perhaps an XL Special could easily whisk across the scene above as though decades had never passed. Things don't seem so forgotten or ...
Read more

Hidden in the Trees

Image
 MP1613.1, Ravenna, MT.  Substation 9  I once met the man who owned the old Substation at Ravenna.  In one of those strange twists of history, so I'm told, it was supposed to be torn down and sold for scrap as the bricks had value.  But the original sale didn't work, the scrapper never came and it remains standing near the howling roar of I90 to this day. I90 is just one part of  the U.S. system that moves upwards of 90% of freight by truck and highway.  But tucked in amongst the tall pines like a mirage, Ravenna looks out blankly towards that interstate and shouts quietly back about a different time. The year was 1972 and General Electric had put together a unique proposal: completion of the electrified railway portion of the Milwaukee Road.  In a formal proposal, offered by GE itself ("Proposal for the Completion of the Electrified Railway Operation of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company") via the Locomotive Products De...
Read more