Stepping Back In Time: Lehigh Valley RR, Phillipsburg, NJ
A hobby of mine is searching out and finding locations in old photos. I’m fascinated by the past and how we view it in the present. So often those that came before us are forgotten. Memories fade, people pass away or move on. But these photos stay. They capture a moment in time. I find a lot of them are mundane or formal. Often times railroads took photos to document their equipment or structures. These valuation photos were often throwaways to most folks. Boring images of a railroad track and a structure. But to fans like me, they are treasure troves of context. Figuring out how the railroad was arranged and what was there in that time frame is wonderful to discover. Here is an example. This image popped up on the Railfan.net Erie Lackawanna Email List Photo Archive:
http://lists.railfan.net/erielackphoto.cgi?erielack-12-12-19/X4863.jpg
The photo shows a street running down to a railroad yard and mainline. There are some buildings scattered about and more railroad cars in the distance. A station can be seen and some other structures. There’s a few more images here:
http://lists.railfan.net/erielack-photo/?erielack-photo&year=19 in the 12/12/2019 section. Check them out.
I was interested to see if I could find this spot. I’m unfamiliar with the location but that didn’t stop me. I did some Googling to find out where the Lehigh Valley passed through Phillipsburg, NJ. East to West. Ok. And there was a sort of bottleneck area here the river where a few RR’s met. Got it. And in the photo is a tiny little sign on the structure to the left “Market St”. Now I knew where to look. A little bit of poking around and I found it. Amazingly, the house on the right is a match for the one in the photo. It still stands! I be if you peeled back all the siding you’d have some original woodwork. Brilliant. Here is the current view:
https://goo.gl/maps/9ucNnBfciRDFW7c2A
Hopefully I’ll make this a more regular thing. I do enjoy it.