CBWC: Trains or Train Tracks
All photographs by Owen Kraus
The train still runs. It can’t exceed 5 mph because the tracks are not up to the task. The train doesn’t really go anywhere. It used to go to all the factories along the Blackstone and its tributaries. It took people to work, hauled raw materials to the mills and finished materials out.
These were the U.S.A.’s first industries, born by the Blackstone. Now those old mills and factories are decaying in the marshes. No roads go to these places and there’s no way to even remove the factories, even though none of them have been used for more than 110 years.
There were never any roads. All these mills and factories were serviced by trains and sometimes by men with horses, but no one bothered to build roads. There are mini-canals and of course always a dam to power the factory or mill.
Photos by Owen Kraus
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Categories: #black-&-white-photography, #BlackstoneRiver, #CBWC, #gallery, #Photography, Transportation
SERENDIPITY: SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Owen took some great fun railroad photos for this week. Thanks 😀
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I didn’t know he could take pictures. When I heard he was going on this railroad ride, I handed him a camera and said: “Take pictures!” So he did 😀
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I do envy Owen that train ride.
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Me too. I hoped I could go on it but by the time it was possible, I wasn’t up to the climbing. This isn’t a train made for the awkward or elderly. He did take some pretty great pictures — and they are really the only train pictures I’ve got.
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I’d probably struggle with the climbing too. My days of climbing into a carriage without proper steps are over. Mostly because I’m scared of coming down backwards.
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I’m also afraid of falling. Once you hit the 60s and 70s, falling is a lot bigger a deal than it was. I remember as a kid watching my mother fall and wondering why it was a big deal. I was only a little kid, maybe five-ish. I didn’t get it. NOW I get it.
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I’ve always had a fear of falling but much more so now. I could climb up on trains in my thirties and forties when I worked for the railways but now I can’t even come down a flight of steep stairs on a boat or a bus if it has to be backwards.
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I have trouble is both directions!
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I LOVE Trains. My Uncle worked on the railroads in NY, and we got to ride them from NY to Buffalo, in the summer, when we visited. I wish we had kept up the passenger service. in this country, I really want another travel alternative to airplanes. Aaah Well, everything is changing…, and not necessarily for the better.
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I keep hoping they will in their consideration of greening up the world, consider FIXING THE TRACKS and improving the quality of the trains. We really wanted to go to your place from here by train, but discovered because of all the areas where the tracks are bad that it would take a solid 72 hours and we couldn’t even be guaranteed comfortable seating. I gave up. we flew instead, but I really wanted to ride and maybe get to actually SEE something along the way!
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Depressing scenes.. sad..
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By 1910, the mills and factories had all moved down south — Georgia, Mississippi — cotton-growing states. Then, in the 1960s, they all moved overseas to China or Pakistan, India, Russia — anywhere but here. And they took our cotton with them. Not all of it, but most of it. So it’s a sad sight in many places. I just wish they would take those ugly old factories down, but there is no access to them. Everything is deep in the swamps along the Blackstone.
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