Hello All,

New guy here, but have been visiting the RYPN website daily for quite a while. Was wondering if anyone could help with the following:

1) Does anyone know if there's a collection anywhere of photographs, railroad or other industrial themed, that show the same location but in different eras similar to the "Difference Of Decades" features that used to be in Trains Magazine?

2) Are there any abandoned railroad ROWs within a days drive of Dallas Texas that are worth exploring?

Thanks

The "difference of decades" theme is also known as "Then & Now" and is quite a popular theme throught history books, not just railfans. Search my name on Amazon, and you'll find I did two book collections of that theme on Baltimore and Washington DC, and I also contributed photography to Jim Campi's "Civil War Battlefields Then & Now".

The only railroad collections I have seen have been a series by Ian Allan Publishing of British railway regions. I have "Scottish Railways Then & Now" by Gavin Morrison, an excellent tome.

I've tried in vain to pitch the concept to American rail publishing houses. Of course, a "PRR Then & Now" series would be fascinating, but the bloody hard part is finding the original vintage photographs and then securing publication rights. Compared to getting right to, and paying for, worthwhile shots by the likes of Phil Hastings, William Rau, Fred Jukes, or O. Winston Link, the "now" photography is by FAR the easy part!

As far as abandoned RR grades within a day of DFW, there are so many that it is hard to count. The question is what kind of exploring are you planning to do? Drive the grade, walk it on foot, or what? There are abandoned main line grades that you can drive, like FM 39 from Mexia to North Zulch, which is the old H&TC grade. There are others all over that you can walk but most now have reverted to private property. I would get the SPV Railroad atlas of North America volumes for Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana and the one form or the other of the State atlases, like "The Roads of Texas" or Arkansas, or Louisiana and start from there. There are abandoned lumber lines all over east Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. There are places like Longleaf, Louisiana, where there are still several miles of the old Red River and Gulf abandoned with the rails still in place after almost 50 years, and some steam engines still stored at the sawmill. In western Texas, there is even an abandoned branch line that you can bicycle downgrade for over 20 miles, and through a tunnel even. It all depends on what you are interested in.

Well known Colorado landscape photographer John Fielder has produced a two volume set of Colorado 1870-2000 photographs, comparing 1870 locations taken by pioneering western photographer William Henry Jackson, with locations in 2000. As many of Jackson's shots were of RR subjects or locations, there's at least some RR (and industrial) content, though that's certainly not the focus. You can view a small sampling, including some RR stuff at Fielder's website here: http://www.johnfielder.com/display.php?category=FJ

While I'd generally agree with Alexander Mitchell that the hard part is finding, and getting access and permissions to the older images, in Fielder's case that turned out to be the easy part. To the greatest extent possible, Fielder attempted to duplicate the Jackson photos as accurately as he could, right down to precise locations, angles and fields of view. It turned out to be a monumental undertaking, but the results are more than impressive. I'd recommend these volumes to anyone with any interest in Colorado and its history. They're "Fine Art" coffee table books, so a bit pricey (especially the first volume), but nothing those of us who buy RR books aren't used to.

Scott

[quote="GN2882"] Are there any abandoned railroad ROWs within a days drive of Dallas Texas that are worth exploring?

Thanks[/quote]

An hour west of Fort Worth, the Weatherford, Mineral Wells & Northwestern [made notable by the renowned Lucius Beebe] is a bike trail between that historic pike's namesake cities. The WMW&NW depot in Mineral Wells is very nicely preserved.

Thanks for the response - yes, I've seen many of the Then And Now books for different cities, and actually have a copy of Frassanito's Gettysburg book - he went to extremes to get the same vantage points, shadow angles, etc. But the railroad ones are for some reason just fascinating to me.