The Keystone Arch Bridges

zedob

Member
While on my way back to Springfield MA from Albany NY via Amtrak over CSX's rails, I noticed some old abandoned stone bridges that roughly paralleled the current roadbed that we were traveling upon. I quickly marked the area down in a road map book of Western MA. I had been following the train's progress through the book I always carry with me for such occassions, to kill time.

After returning home, I did a little research via the internet. First, I logged on to MS Terraserver http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?T=1&S=11&Z=18&X=1660&Y=11714&W=2 and found the location. I looked for ways to get to the location, but it looked like it would be a real tough hike because when I first noticed the bridges, I was being impressed with the rather rough terrain we were riding through (no, it's not the Rockies, but it is still impressive and it would still be a healthy hike). The roads are scarce.


Then I read up on the original builder of the line the Western (Boston & Albany), which I found in Ronald Dale Karr's book The Rail Lines of Southern New England. Armed with that, I returned to the net and did a search on the railroad and came up with this site http://home.att.net/~rickarbour/Index2.htm

Guess I'm not the only one who knows about these bridges. The funny thing about it is that I had gone to that website before about a year ago, but since I wasn't overly interested in any railroads in that area, I just favoritized it and forgot about it. The good thing is, they have put an improved trail in and are making improvements for safety reasons.

The sight does have some good engineering info and there are some good closeups for detail. However, I was planning to make the trip up this weekend to take pics, since it's not too terribly far from my house. Well, as long as the weather holds up, but that's looking pretty grim at the moment. The weather guys have been calling for rail and snow (Snow!?, crimminy, the leaves haven't even finished falling of the trees).

Still looks like a good way to kill a day.
 
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