Perkiomen Railroad

This one's for me so feel free to look away and count blue cars, photograph coconut trees, eat sunflower seeds or whatever it is you do when someone asks you to look away.

I found this amazing website on the Perkiomen branch of the Reading Railroad. This is the long abandoned railroad line on which the current Perkiomen Trail (one of my favorite biking trails) was built upon. This guy, who calls himself a ferro-equinologist (a railroad archaeologist), appears to have traveled over and retraced the entire route of the original railroad line which is no longer there, houses, weeds, the trail and the 21st century having crept up over it. He even created a mapelogue of it, just like I partially did. This ferro-equinologying stuff, by the way, is something that I've often dreamt of doing, and probably will do sometime in the near future.

He's also discovered and photographed various hard-to-notice artifacts of the original railway line that are still standing on or near the trail, such as old rails, rusty signs, signals, old stations, coal feeder trestles, etc. What's funny is that I have often passed and spotted many of these structures on the trail and always wondered about them.

Here's something else he's done on the website. He has some old pictures of the railroad line and based on those, he tries to figure out the locations of the train stations (long gone) in the current landscape. For example, here's a portion of the trail I was biking this saturday. It's in a village called Salford. He has this old black and white picture of the station in the village and a new current picture of the location, and matching the buildings in the background, he figured out where the station building used to stand. This is all very interesting stuff for me, a huge fan and a frequent user of this trail and also a certified railroad lunatic.

Probably not that interesting for you, though. Look at you, all wrapped up in your sunflower seeds and coconut trees.

Book Shelf

Yesterday, at the Berwyn train station, I saw an empty shelf on the wall with a sign saying, "Take a book, Keep a book".

When I see a book on it, I will let you know.

I was here

After getting inspired by the photograph in my previous post, last weekend I decided that it was time for me to snap my own award winning picture of sun rays descending through dense foliage adjoining a mysterious railway line going to nowhere.

The first order of business, of course, was to find a mysterious railway line. I was aware of this unused Conrail line near my apartment, adjacent to the Main Line of the old Pennsylvania Railroad that is still in use. The problem was I had no clue how to get there from the road. This is where Google Earth came in.


I surveyed the railway line through the eyes of a flying crow and discovered that there was a faintly discernible path going from the railway station parking lot to the abandoned line. I wasn't sure of its existence, but if I wanted that award-winning photograph, I would have to find out if the path existed. So I went.

When I drove into the parking lot, I found that Google had indeed been true to reality. There actually was a path going off into the bushes. I followed it and after walking through a number of puddles, it broke through into the abandoned railway line.

Now when I embarked on this adventure, I was quite aware that my railway line would be a poor people's version of the one shown in this photograph here. But I wasn't prepared for the extent of its destitution. For one, there were no rails. I'm guessing that when the final train pulled away, they rolled up all the rails and stuffed 'em into its cafeteria car. There were no wooden sleepers either. Even the gravel had been removed, presumably by the gravel mafia, leaving a bare cinder bed. But it was a railway line and so I continued walking westwards.

Actually, it was a nice walk with birds, leaves, tiny red colored berries which were probably poisonous and past-peak fall colors with a Kim Bassingerish old womanly beauty. On my left was the railway line that's still in use. Trains whistled past at regular intervals, including the Amtrak Keystone and the Amtrak Pennsylvanian.

After a mile or so, the railway line ended in a bridge which was closed, citing the live wires of the in-use railroad underneath. Since there was no other way to go, I had to turn back. I did consider climbing over the gate but the picture of Homer Simpson getting electroshocked in that episode came to mind.

But I still hadn't taken my award-winning photograph. So I decided to walk over to the in-use line and try my luck. So here it is.

Not to criticize my own work, but compared to the other picture, this one seems to be falling short in the mystique and ambience department. After analyzing it at length, I finally concluded that it was something to do with the carbon content of the rails. I am open to any other suggestions.

I would rather be here

(picture via maru)