Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Tag: railroads

  • 13 train tracks

    Out on the tracks

  • single frame: Interurban overpass

    A bridge over an abandoned interurban line in Indianapolis.

  • single frame: My son at the old railroad bridge

    My son near an old railroad bridge in Zionsville, Indiana.

  • single frame: Grand Trunk Western

    Grand Trunk Western Minolta SR-T 101, 50mm f/1.7 MC Rokkor-PF Ferrania P30 Alpha 2018 I figured out how to read largely on my own starting at age 3. As we’d ride around in the car I’d read aloud the big signs. Mom said that the first one I read was the BUS sign at the…

  • A walking tour of historic New Augusta, Indiana

    In the 1850s, commerce and prosperity arrived by rail across the United States. Railroads boomed in these years, with thousands upon thousands of track miles being built. Wherever rails were laid, towns inevitably popped up. A rail line was built between Indianapolis and Lafayette in about 1850. It passed within a mile and a half…

  • Tracks Pentax ES II, 55mm f/1.8 SMC Takumar, Arista Premium 400 2015

  • Captured: On the Monon Trail

    The Monon was a passenger and freight rail line that operated almost entirely within Indiana, with two main lines that intersected in a small northwestern Indiana town from which the railroad got its name. The Monon’s rail roots stretch back to 1847, and as best as I can tell service ended by about 1970. The…

  • Nikon F2 vs. Canon PowerShot S95

    It always interests me to see how different cameras and lenses and films render the same scene at the same moment.  You might remember that I recently visited an abandoned, never-finished railroad bridge in Clay County, Indiana. I took this photo of it with my Canon PowerShot S95. My Nikon F2 was along, too, so…

  • The mystery of the unfinished, abandoned bridge

    As we explored an old gravel alignment of Indiana State Road 46 in Clay County, we came upon these enormous bridge abutments. We stopped to look them over, and tried to figure out why they were there. We even spotted an elevated bridge over a nearby creek. It lined up perfectly with these abandoned abutments.…

  • On the Dummy Line

    What fun songs do you remember singing as a child? Preacher Mike’s blog this morning quoted a line from an old song about trains that I learned in the second grade but haven’t thought about in years. The teacher gathered our class around the piano every day and we sang songs from a set of discarded songbooks that…

  • South Bend bridges

    I was in South Bend over the long weekend. I went for a drive one afternoon and wound up following Northside Blvd. its entire length along the St. Joseph River. I hadn’t driven that way in more than 20 years, back when I didn’t have enough experience to appreciate what the city had to offer.…