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That reminds me of a visit I made to Xenia, Ohio a couple years ago. I have the Sampling of Penn Central book and I seen several pictures around the Xenia area that looked interesting. Since you live in Ohio, perhaps you know the Xenia area better than I do, Jerry. Anyway, I have some questions concerning one of the pictures just outside downtown Xenia (past the station to the east) on the line that runs northeast out of Xenia toward Wilberforce, OH. I don't have the book right in front of me, so bear with me here. In the picture, the photographer is on some sort of highway overpass looking, I believe towards the southwest at an oncoming PC freight. There is an old concrete grain silo or coal tower (@100-150' tall or so) in the picture next to the mainline with a branch curving to the right on the other side of the silo. Well, when I was out there, to my surprise, the silo is still there! It is in bad shape, but looks just as delapidated as it did back in the early 70's. I'm sure it's abandoned and likely was even back then in the PC era. It looks like it could topple over at any minute. What I would like to know is what exactly is this silo/tower thing? Who was it used by? When was it last in use and for what? The right of way is still there, but all the track has been removed a long time ago, (like all ex-PC lines in the Xenia vincinity) converted to a bike trail. If the silo were to collapse, I'm sure it would fall across the bike trail. Several telegraph poles are actually still standing as well. The overpass that the photographer took the picture from is gone. Actually, I couldn't see any signs of the overpass and wondered where it used to be exactly. What road was it? Why is it now missing (there isn't even a road crossing at grade in it's place now)? This line also has a relatively steep grade on it. As I walked the trail further east, it became very apparent and started to curve before reaching Wilberforce further to the east. Must have been fun bringing loaded trains down into Xenia via this line during the day. Hopefully you or someone can fill me in on the questions... -Gregg B. > Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 16:45:04 -0500 > From: jer -AT- smellycat.com > To: penn-central@smellycat.com > Subject: PC: _A Sampling of Penn Central_ Google Earth Project > > All, > > While eating dinner last night, I was fooling around with Google Earth, > using it to try to find places that were pictured in Jerry Taylor's > masterful book, _A Sampling of Penn Central_. As time went on, it became > an obsession, and I ended up going through the entire book finding the > photograph locations in Google Earth. > > I decided to share the results of my gratuitous waste of an evening and > morning with all of you by posting them on my web site: > > http://pc.smellycat.com/docs/samplingkmz.html > > On this page, you can download a file called "sampling.kmz". Save the > file to your computer and load it into Google Earth. It will give you a > folder with placemarks for all of the pictures I could locate in the > book, starting with Morgan Run, OH, on page 9 and ending in Rising, IL, > on page 423. Due to the varying resolution of Google Earth's imagery, > not all locations could be pinpointed. Also, some of the pictures were > taken in nondescript locales that I could not locate either. Details > about Google Earth can be found at: > > http://earth.google.com > > If you find any mistakes, please let me know and I'll update the file. > Enjoy! > > -JWJ > Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser! Learn more. |