The sad side of working on prototypical routes.

[JCitron]

As I've been working on my fictional Enfield and Eastern personal route, I've been including DEMs of my area. More recently, I've started recreating the Haverhill to Plaistow, NH region. It's been quite a shock seeing how much has been replaced by concrete and empty lots in my city compared to what was there even 40 years ago. Sadly, urban renewal removed some more significant buildings in the city including the big railroad station, the city hall, and some other famous buildings, all in the name of progress. I never realized how much of the downtown was ripped out over the decades until now. The city lost its landmarks and whole neighborhoods to the wrecking ball by some crackpot contractor who had ties to city hall. When he determined that the old high school, made famous by the comic strip Archie, was unsafe and needed demolition, he was stopped. It turns out he had ties to a mob-owned salvage company and was profiting by selling off the scrap. By then it was too late because half of Merrimack, Main, and other streets were literally stripped of their buildings. Oh there was nothing wrong with the high school. The building was renovated and is now the city hall. The old city hall, a grand Victorian building, was razed and is now a parking lot.

So as I've been researching and building the route, I have that deep sadness seeing what used to be here. The good thing with Trainz is we can rebuild and return areas back to their former glory.

John

 

[RoysTrainz]

Morning John,

I fully agree sad to see also on my route(s) many corners or complete areas gone n like in Calgary sometimes some traces left but overgrown overtaken by modern times.
I tend to recreate where possible the old track and still give them a "historical" destination as for trainz this is very exciting area a forced mix of old and new.
You have a great weekend John in this so bizar dark world these days!!

Roy,Ning and Djoetje

 

[rickf77]

I know just how you feel John. Preserving the past used to be important around here. Not anymore! The good thing is that outside the major towns and cities things are disappearing at a much slower rate. I once had a 1949 map of Dartmouth. I'd have to say it was about 80% smaller back then. I guess when they built the bridge from Halifax, things started to take off. Before that, there was no reason to come here unless you lived here. I'd take the dirty little town of my childhood over what is here now any day. I also use trainz to bring back the good old days and remember old places and friends and great times from the past as I build my route.

Cheers .... Rick

 

[Kree8tiviT]

Totally agree, John........ and is a primary reason on my personal route I try to recreate things as they "were". Vast amounts of trackage have been removed over the decades - turned into commercial developement or biking/hiking trails - and I try to put it all back (as best as I can remember it). Sadly, a great many beautiful and majestic station buildings have been torn down - but I model them, put them back in place - and they "live-on" in Trainz. A number of years ago I made a list titled: "Cornfields I have Known" - the ones that are no longer there, lost to strip malls, fast-food joints, Walmarts and housing projects. Progress??

Regards,
Mark

 

[bl4882]

Guys: Spot on!

Bernie

 

[prr325]

Sad to say this is all so true. I started a route using DEM based on USGS data three or four years ago. USGS data is superb, but it's all up-to-date and I'm modeling PRR's Elmira Division/Branch (Williamsport PA to Elmira NY) and the Susquehanna and New York (Williamsport to Towanda) circa 1925. Not only are so many structures and rails gone, but the topography has changed so much in some locations. One example is the levee system around Williamsport, built in the early 1950s. Another is highway construction that completely erased many parts of the ROW. The topper is PennDOT's rebuild of Route 15 north of Williamsport. They cut away whole sides of mountains to build a limited access 4 lane highway. Very nice to drive on. But in my Trainz route I had to spend considerable time restoring land contours (as best as I could) using older USGS topo maps as a guide.

 

[martinvk]

From a contrarian point, those wonderful old buildings and structures didn't just appear on virgin territory, but probably replaced something that was already there. And even if there was nothing there in the building sense, there would have been wide open spaces or forests. Didn't the original buildings deserve to stay? What about the loss of the "natural" environment.

Every generation laments the passing of its early monuments as they are replaced by newer ones of the next generation. Has always been and will probably always be.

 

[bl4882]

Jim, I share your problem and pain.

I'm working on the north end of my SP Coast Line route in the mid-'50s, which is San Francisco. At that time an arc of The City (caps because that is how it is known among Bay Area residents) about 3 miles wide and a dozen miles long was literally paved with the trackage of 4 railroads. The DEM from about 2012 I'm working with, though, shows but two scraggly and chopped off TIGER lines for the track, and I think a lot of elevations have been distorted by new high rise buildings (a guess on my part). Fortunately Google Earth made a mosaic of the Rumsey Collection of pretty good aerial photos from 1938 and 1946 and overlaid it on their time machine, and I've been able to grab onto some other sources that give me a pretty good picture of the way I remember it back in the '50s. Nowadays it's all pretty much gentrified, almost all the track is paved over with asphalt, and the only hint that it was one of the busiest ports in the US are a few bulk loading and unloading facilities. The rest is history, a few moldering disused warehouses, and tourist traps. The only things that are produced there now are some pretty good pizzas and government.

Apropos nothing: one good thing came out of the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. The Embarcadero Freeway was so shoddily built it was damaged beyond repair and had to be torn down, so it is no longer blocking the view of the beautiful old Ferry Building as you walk down Market. Evokes a lot of memories.

Bernie

 

[JCitron]

From a contrarian point, those wonderful old buildings and structures didn't just appear on virgin territory, but probably replaced something that was already there. And even if there was nothing there in the building sense, there would have been wide open spaces or forests. Didn't the original buildings deserve to stay? What about the loss of the "natural" environment.

Every generation laments the passing of its early monuments as they are replaced by newer ones of the next generation. Has always been and will probably always be.

I do agree with what you've said here, Martin. In my city, however, much was removed just because. There were people saying no to removing the historic buildings along Main and Merrimack streets, but the bulldozers and wrecking ball came along anyway. When the contractor was ready to take down the famous high school, made famous by the old Archie comic strip, that's when he was halted. By then it was too late. Perfectly good homes, the city hall knocked down for a parking lot. He even took down the famous Lanham Club, where Robert Frost read poems, and Leonard Bernstein gave piano recital concerts, was torn down. Also great swaths of other landmarks were wiped out.

Today we have huge parking lots and rubble where buildings close to 300 and 400 years old once stood.

Yes, the city did go through some big demographic changes during this period as its shoe shops closed. These factories once hired over 10,000 workers who shopped on nearby Washington and Merrimack street. When I was a kid, I would go shopping down there with my mom, and I remember the strong odor of leather which is completely absent today. The other thing too is gentrification of regions. These people, who we have to be nice to because we have to be politically correct about everything, come in and complain about the very businesses and industries that make a city live. The industries are forced out and move their work overseas, sometimes the overseas operation is in progress and this is an excuse. So instead of a working city, we have suburb where no one shops or does anything except on weekends. The result is a dead city center that has little business at all.

John

 

[jacksonbarno]

The real kicker is that now a lot of that infastructure is being rebuilt:

The track bed of the LWVRR is being looked at as a possible future means of getting traffic off of the over-clogged Scranton Expressway.

New York is building a new station next to Penn Station because the new Penn Station built in the 60's is so confusing and cramped for space that it barely functions as a station anymore.

Chicago is looking potentially at building a station on the site of the old B&O Grand Central Station because their other terminals are too packed and poorly equipped for HSR.

The BNSF crossing of the cascades is packed to capacity because of all of the rolling pipeline oil traffic. Oh how they miss the MILW line now!

These are just a few examples of the fact that the US loves to tear stuff down and then rebuild it five years down the road for double the cost.

 

[martinvk]

Just to be clear, poor planning and willful destruction for no real gain cannot be excused. Its the preserve at all costs no matter the potential improvement crowd that I find so annoying.

On the other hand, I was recently watching the history of the old Penn Station, not the new one that is currently there. Near the start of the program they described the wholesale buying of the existing tenements and the subsequent bulldozing of them all to make way for the new station. I know we all think that station was a monument to railway transportation, I wonder what the displaced people thought of it?

I think there is a lot of good weather fog in the nostalgic remembrance of the good old days. I guess it comes down to, my fondly remembered things are precious, yours are historic, theirs are junk.

 

[JCitron]

Just to be clear, poor planning and willful destruction for no real gain cannot be excused. Its the preserve at all costs no matter the potential improvement crowd that I find so annoying.

On the other hand, I was recently watching the history of the old Penn Station, not the new one that is currently there. Near the start of the program they described the wholesale buying of the existing tenements and the subsequent bulldozing of them all to make way for the new station. I know we all think that station was a monument to railway transportation, I wonder what the displaced people thought of it?

I think there is a lot of good weather fog in the nostalgic remembrance of the good old days. I guess it comes down to, my fondly remembered things are precious, yours are historic, theirs are junk.

I agree too. With Penn Station, this was a bit like our city hall and landmarks. Progress came along with an expanded Madison Square Garden arena in its place even though there were petitions and screams to preserve and renovate the structure. The same group that destroyed Penn Station, were then planning on an office tower where Grand Central stands. That's when the cries got louder and the preservation movement gained momentum. The demise of Penn Station though happened 25 year too early. In the mid-1980s to early 1990s, there was a wholesale renovation program that fixed up the big stations along the Northeast Corridor including Boston's South Station, which was scheduled to be meet the wrecking ball in favor of some kind of office building. Instead the station was renovated with the addition of direct access to the MBTA Red line. Prior to that people had to either go outside or cross the busy square to catch the subway, which was not very convenient. Today, it is a station with access to both the commuter rail, Amtrak, busses, and subways all in one place.

Sure the people that were displaced were, well displaced. Back in the 19th century, people had little say over stuff like that. Today, it would have been different as people would have been given alternate housing. In Haverhill, where I live, many homes were leveled to make a big shopping plaza, and a truly hideous one at that.

http://binged.it/1ok7pCT

Wherever there is a parking lot in this city, used to be a building. Here is a 1938 view of the same area...

http://www.historicaerials.com/aeri...7769864305444&lon=-71.0751523070611&year=1938


John

 

[wholbr]

Hi everybody.

Just to be clear, poor planning and willful destruction for no real gain cannot be excused. Its the preserve at all costs no matter the potential improvement crowd that I find so annoying.

On the other hand, I was recently watching the history of the old Penn Station, not the new one that is currently there. Near the start of the program they described the wholesale buying of the existing tenements and the subsequent bulldozing of them all to make way for the new station. I know we all think that station was a monument to railway transportation, I wonder what the displaced people thought of it?

I think there is a lot of good weather fog in the nostalgic remembrance of the good old days. I guess it comes down to, my fondly remembered things are precious, yours are historic, theirs are junk.

I have to agree with the posting of martinvk, especially his last paragraph regarding the fog of nostalgia. Many people in the United Kingdom criticise the cuts made to the railway network in the 1960s but at the same time forgetting that by the mid-sixties very few people were using the railways and therefore people no longer wished to pay the taxes that were needed to keep them running at the level of that time.

Again, the steam era is today thought and read of with great nostalgia by those who only see steam locomotives in their gleaming well cared for state on the preservation railways. However, those of us who remembered the steam era of the railways remember that as the stations being filthy, smoke filled places where you could not even sit down on those lovely GWR benches because of the grime that would get on your clothes if you did. The engines and rolling stock Where also so covered in grime both inside and out. When diesels replaced steam, to many of us that seemed like manna from heaven.

The opposite side of the above would be that I have been building my North Devon branch lines route since 2008. Similar to John’s posting even in that period much as changed in the region that makes some of what I’ve created obsolete. Barnstable has grown significantly in the past four years and visually not for the better. The old town has and urban sprawl around it that degrades this once wonderful market town. That said, there is now much more employment in the region brought by the new companies located on the trading estates surrounding the town. So again nostalgia for the old by me is proberly not shared by the residents of the town today.

NB:- my North Devon route now runs to 31 stations on seven interconnecting branch lines and I would not know how many miles of track. I am now completing the final stages of the Bideford to Appledore branch with the Lynton, Lynmouth branch scenery still to be completed (LOL)

Will it ever be finished.
Bill

 

[boleyd]

Preservation of landmark structures cost big money. Each city may have a few that were preserved but others went away for "progress". One of the big items is provisioning the internal environment, OSHA standards, electrical load needs, etc. Contribute to your local preservation society or find builders that prefer renovation to greenfield.

 

[steamboateng]

Hi, John...........
You know I feel your pain. Too many unique architectural delights have been reduced to rubble. Stations, mills and factories, dating from the 1870's and later, here in the US Northeast have gone missing. Ornate Victorian, and Classical railroad structures, reflecting a more leisurely, stately era of railroad monopolies, collusion and corruption has gone to landfill or worse. Large brick mills and factories; built in the height of the 'Industrial Revolution', were often archetechtural gems in their own right. My recommendation is to grab your camera and preserve what remains in a digital archive. I still do, every time we go on a vacation trip. Local libraries are a seldom used resource for pix of thing as they were. I find that donating a stack of children's books or your old hard covers go quite a way to making friends with the librarians.

 

[jacksonbarno]

Boston's rail infrastructure is almost all brand new. It's also very, very reduced from what it once was. South Station went from 28 platform tracks to 13, North Station went from 24 tracks to 12 and was torn down and replaced with the extremely ugly structure that is now known as TD Garden. Back Bay station suffered a fire in 1928, which resulted in the beautiful Beaux Arts structure being torn down and replaced with a handsome brick building, which, in turn, was torn down in the 80's and replaced with the ugly station that is still standing. The yards, namely the two large New Haven yards in downtown Boston, B&A's Beacon Park in Allston, Exeter Street (which is now the site of the Prudential Building, and Back Bay yards, are gone, the elevated Orange, Green, and Red Line sections are all torn down except for a very short stretch of Green Line, and the Green Line's A branch was discontinued in the 70s'. This isn't even the start of the transformation of rail in Boston over the late 20th century. Yet, the funniest thing that could possibly occur in this situation has happened: South Station needs to be expanded because of the traffic loads, CSX is having logistical problems because of the move from Beacon Park to Worcester, and the MBTA needs a new coach yard near South Station because they may not be able to effectively move cars from their coach yard near North Station because of the closing of Beacon Park.

 

[AMTRAKwannabe]

I totally agree with you guys, Norfolk used to be a major export town, the C&O, Virginian(VGN), N&W, SBD(SAL & ACL, SCL), Norfolk Southern(original), Southern(SOU), Eastern Shore RR(ESRR), all had large export/rail-sea facilities here. We even had a terminal station served by the majority of these railroads, sadly the terminal was torn down in 1979 to make room for a ball park (I'm not the biggest baseball fan either). We just got passenger service back in December 2013, first train in over 30 years. Now we have NS, CSX, and some shortlines. Most of the tracks have been ripped up as a result of the merger era (or as I call them, The Dark Ages). All the bridges are still intact, but most of the tracks have been paved over, literally, where C&O's rail barge terminal used to sit is now some fancy new apartment complex, the old ACL building is a banks regional HQ, there's nothing left, it's a shame politics can do what it does.