Time marches on...

[E.M. Bell]

Alternate title...Changes they are a coming...progress is a Bitch....


No matter where you life path leads , you will always have a hometown, and in that hometown, memories.   My hometown is Lawrenceburg Ky, and a lot of those memories are centered around spending time hanging around the depot there, watching trains, soaking it all in. Over the years, a lot of the RR icons have fallen victim to time and progress.  The agents job went to the CYO, the old depot went to become a farmers market, and progress marched on.

One of my favorite shots in town has always been just a standard roster of the T19 local power tied up on the old house track in front of the weathered Lawrenceburg Hotel.  The local used to tie up every night and weekend behind the depot there on the house track, and then as things changed, they started leaving the power on the West Wye most of the time.  In the past decade or so, it was a rare treat to find an engine parked there on the old house track, and just about every time it happened I would find myself up there in the dark with camera and tripod to record it. 

Now to the present. NS is undertaking a major MofW project on the LS mainline right now, new ties, rail, switches ect.  Part of this project will to be remove the mainline switch that leads to the house and Tobacco tracks.  In Two weeks or less if things go to schedule, those tracks will be removed for good. The small yard just East of town will undergo a expansion, with the existing tracks being added to for more car storage, and maybe even a new track or two added on. NS will have one less switch maintain, and perhaps the local operations will be a tad more fluid.

Tonight, for what will almost certainly be the last time, the local crew saw fit to park the power on the house track one last time, and I went to record the event in the dark, for what will almost certainly be my last time.  Yea, its just a short section of rarely used rail and ties, but even that can have meaning to some.

and, let me add....To add insult to injury, the last engine that will grace those rails was....a danged ol junker catfish....man, someone get this knife out of my back   Like I said, progress.......


NS T19 tied up at Lawrenceburg KY, Monday night, 10-06-08

[butch]

This great!  It's the kind of thing I would expect to see on Kevin Scanlon's website.
http://www.lightsourcephoto.com/Photographers%20Railroad%20Page/archives.html

[E.M. Bell]

Thanks for the compliment butch. I am a avid reader of Kevins page, and there are some dandy stories and pictures on there. I dont know that the little ditty I wrote above is of the caliber to go there with the big dogs, but again, Thanks. 

I will see about posting some older stuff from the same location later tonight perhaps..

[Michael Knight]

Thanks for sharing, Emmett. I've always enjoyed seeing your photos from various years at that location. Some things just don't change for the better...

[JCagle]

I know the feeling all too well. At some point in the near future the Kannapolis depot will no longer be used for the local. From what I have heard they plan on building a small metal building somewhere near Harrisburg to the South so that they will be closer to the industries they serve. Some of the nostalgia is already gone due to progress and construction. We lost the lot that I used to sit in with a friend of mine almost every weekend at some point and just relax and take it all in.

[mbgphoto79]

Great shots, at least the crew did park the catfish there, and at least it is Long Hood Forward....  I know the feeling too of losing a great train watching spot.  A few years back NS took out the Lidell St. grade crossing in Charlotte which sat at a great spot on the south end of the yard.  This is where my dad took me as a kid and I got the love for trains...