Life imitates layout-building art

Steven,

Thanks for thought provoking photo. Just a few of comments:

The building on the drawbridge may have also served has a harbor master type of control building. The waterway is heavily trafficked.

The flag pole may have served as a signal flag pole. Nothing showing, status ok.

The photo also shows the value of a backdrop in modeling, as this vantage point makes use of the horizon. The photographer appears to be a least as high as the bridge.

A great photo!

bridge Agent-Operator terminated in 1949 and some interesting follow up photos at the end of this

Moonman posted:

bridge Agent-Operator terminated in 1949 and some interesting follow up photos at the end of this

Carl:

Thanks for the interesting info.  That website link you provided is one of my favorites.  Mr. Ozog, the site's publisher, is both a good photographer and a good writer.  He's also generous man with an extensive photograph and memorabilia collection.

This link shows a picture taken from the air, from the other side of the river.  The grassy outcropping with the high-tension line tower on it is the curve in the picture shown above where the stairs were.  The grocery store is long gone.

SJS

Sadly, the bridge is gone, according to this link...

Great photo!!  I totally enjoyed looking at it.   I love your thought provoking commentary too Steven!  

Another photo of the same store appeared on the auction site this morning.  In addition, another shot was sold a few weeks back.  The two below don't show the railroad, but they do show more detail concerning the grocery store.

In the photo above, note the Bell Telephone sign to the right and left of the grocer's name.  Note also how different the building looks from the prior photo.  Again, these three structures seem like they could be sitting on anyone's layout.

Now the Bell telephone sign has been moved off the main sign to a side window on the left.

Please click on the photos because the larger sizes show great detail which I find fascinating.   The fact that they weren't all taken in the same photo shoot -- but rather months or years apart -- is interesting too.

SJS

Steven,

Great photos and conversation starters.  Yesterday on my drive home, I noticed a telephone pole that was bent over the road slightly out of alightment with the others. (It had wires that also ran across the highway, which no doubt pulled it in that direction.)

I immediately filed the image away for future use.  Nothing says "railroad layout" to me than a line of telephone poles following the curve of a RR track or town street.

It ever used, my advice would be to use only a light lean and make sure that the sight lines to it look good from every possible viewing angle.  In my mind's eye, the model poles would also have wires, which if stiffened say with clear glue, could be used to lead the eye to and from any leaning poles and add to the realism.

What a nice and "doable" vignette to share.  It offers so many possibilities.  I would not have guessed RI, 'though.

Best,

Tomlinson Run Railroad

These kinds of photos should be enlarged, matted, framed and placed above the couch. You could look at it 60 days in a row and notice something new each day.

Not to hijack my own thread, but two other photos from this area have also been recently been auctioned.  I'll put them here because, from a regional sense, they are more or less companions to the others.

Each shows a few men on a handcar.  The location of the handcar pictures is about 3 miles to the north of the photo of the curve coming out of the bridge posted above.  They were taken in the city of Fall River, Massachusetts.  Tiverton, RI  (where the bridge curve is located) and Fall River, Mass share a common border.  Both were taken between 1900 and 1910.

The first, which is the lesser of the two, shows five men on their way to or from work.  Somehow, they've left an oil can on the side of the tracks that they'll need to retrieve before they go:

The second, which I absolutely love, shows four very proud men who've stopped to be photographed.  If you've ever wondered where the expression "lunch bucket" comes from, just look at the handful of lunch buckets sitting on the car.  It looks like these guys could step right out of the photo, grab a beer with you, and start telling you their story.

I have no idea who the photographer was for all these pictures I've posted, but I'd like to think it's the same guy.  To Carl "Moonman"'s point above, this photographer knew from either training or experience how to compose a good shot, loaded with both interesting detail and taken from an advantageous perspective.  I'm guessing he also knew how to give his subjects good commands and direction.  The way those four guys above look in the picture, it seems to me that someone had said to them just moments before, "Alright.  Stand to, gentlemen!  This one's for the history books.  Make your mother proud!"

Like RogerPete, I could look at these all day.  I'm still kicking myself that I didn't splurge and get the second handcar postcard.  I was a bidder, but not at the price it finally went at.  These all just scream to be put up on the wall of the layout room.

SJS

Ok, another photo of this same location appeared on that auction site this morning.  I'm filing this one on this thread just to keep them all in one place.

This isn't a particularly good photograph, but a few things about it are interesting to me:

• First, it's taken at roughly the same location as the prior photos, but this one is from the grocery store side of the street.  The photographer's back is to the water.
  
  
• Next, both the Tiverton, RI RR station is clearly shown (it's the large 3-story building on the right side) and a steam train is shown waiting in the station.  It's too bad that the loco is behind the stores; all you can see is its smoke.
  
  
• The sender's comment on the front is what makes this priceless to me: 

        "I don't want you to forget any of these old time places."  

    We're sitting here looking at these photos 110 years after they were taken and marveling at a time gone by
    but the sender wrote those words in 1906 and was also telling the recipient that this was a nice old-timey
    scene.  Wow.

Enjoy.

Steven J. Serenska

I'm replying to my own thread because yet another photo of the same RR curve over the same river in Tiverton, Rhode Island appeared on eBay this morning.  Today's photo was taken several years before the first one I posted at the top of of this thread:

In this photo, the following changes can be observed from the first photo above:

• The swing bridge over the river had not yet been built.  The river was still cut off by a fixed rock bridge built on a curve.
  
  
• The ramshackle building close to the tracks on the photographer's side of the river had been demolished and was replaced, in part, by the smaller building next to the grocery store.
  
  
• The wooden staircase leading up to the tracks and station platform had not yet been built.
  
  
• The semaphore had not yet been installed ... it wasn't needed because there was no possibility of an open bridge.

The way the large boat to the right of the bridge is using it as shelter is amusing from today's perspective.  I can tell you that this stretch of river has an extremely strong current and winds.  Today, that particular spot on the river is almost the opposite of "shelter".

Steven J. Serenska

Fascinating to go through these photos and have the analysis going on.

Very interesting, Steve.

MELGAR

I used to goof off in Tiverton as a youngster. I remember a small yard near that curve that was pretty well rotted away and I want to say the tracks were still there. I also seem to remember a semaphore still standing on the Tiverton side into the 80s. My dad worked in Newport so I'd go hang out with him at his shop and muck around the OC&N tracks when I was a wee muppet. I think most of the Newport yard was gone by the late 80s.

Here's a nice link: https://portsmouthhistorynotes...gory/sakonnet-river/

'

• One of my pet peeves about some scenes that I see -- and which I may now have to abandon -- is that the foundations of the grocery store building and the small annex structure look like they were just plopped down on top of the dirt

doesnt look that way to me. it looks dirty along edges from rain splatter and shadows

"One of my pet peeves about some scenes that I see -- and which I may now have to abandon -- is that the foundations of the grocery store building and the small annex structure look like they were just plopped down on top of the dirt, rather than settling in and/or showing a "realistic" growth of brush around them and hiding those gaps.  There are many layouts with building foundations that look like this, so it's good for me to know this is more accurate than I was thinking."

If you look at the close-up shots, you can see that the buildings are indeed anchored into the ground. Although there is no greenery, the dirt does come up around the foundation.