Forgotten Lands, Places and Transit

As I've discussed before, the City of Chicago has been most radically transformed in the recent past near the Chicago River.

Centralia, Pennsylvania is one of those places where the popular story can easily become more interesting than the history itself, as evidenced by its plight being the basis for the first Silent Hill movie, in an attempt to explain the area fog, more famo…

With how much Area 51 has been in the news recently, I figured it would be a good time to talk about one of the facility's more interesting (to me) pieces of infrastructure, at least that the US Government acknowledges exists, its railroad.

Most amusement park enthusiasts point toward the original Bat at King's Island as the world's first, permanent, suspended roller coaster.

It's been awhile since I've made a state level map of any of the US States, but I got a recent request to map the State of New Mexico, and figured it was time to put another feather in my cap!

In 1902, the Manchester Dorset and Granville Railroad was chartered as a subsidiary of the Norcross‑West Marble Company to haul prized Dorset white marble to finishers in Manchester so it could be shipped on to major cities, most prominently New York City,

Almost eight (!)

Block 61 at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie has a rare quality that I'm always seemingly chasing: the feeling that something important used to be here… and that the land is still deciding what to do with it.

There are very few single lane bridges in northeast Illinois remaining, and for mostly good reasons, as the ones that remain are typically substandard and have a streak of being hit by box trucks.

If you ever find yourself on a drive down Addison Road between North Avenue and Lake Street, you pass a strangely wide strip of land on the west side of the road - too broad for a sidewalk, too linear for a park, too empty to be accidental.

Across the American landscape, the physical remnants of infrastructure often outlast the memories of the people who built it.

Nestled along the eastern shore of Utah Lake, beneath the looming presence of the Wasatch Mountains, the Geneva Steel Plant in Vineyard, Utah stood for decades as one of the most consequential industrial sites in the American West.

In the context of railway infrastructure, "Transcontinental" typically refers to the original Transcontinental Railroad, particularly in the United States.

The Dodge City Montezuma & Trinidad Railway was a short-lived railroad operating between Dodge City and Montezuma, KS.

I try my best on this blog to stay out of current political matters and almost always stay out of social issues.

At first glance, there is nothing remarkable about Roy Hoppy Hopkins Drive.

Tucked off a narrow, unpaved dead-end road just south of the hamlet of Dover Plains in Dutchess County, New York, lies a place that seems suspended in time, and drenched in myth.

If you zoom far enough into Cook County’s parcel data, you’ll find something strange.

The Hanford Site, also referred to as Hanford Engineer Works or Site W, is a decommissioned nuclear production complex located along the Columbia River in Benton County, Washington.

Do you want to run a railway, but can't afford a steam engine?

I have once again received more information on this line thanks to the generous help of Brisan Comstock!

Several years ago, our friend and occasional guest-blogger JetLaggedJaff made a visit to Toronto and the CN Tower, which he was kind enough to share with us.

It's been almost eight years since I began tracing the tracks of railroad corridors across Illinois, the United States, and the rest of the world, after having first notices the numerous rights of way while not working and browsing aerial images on Google…

Just outside the desert frontier town of Uyuni, Bolivia—a gateway to the world’s largest salt flats—lies a surreal tableau frozen in time.

The Division Street Bridge in Lockport, IL is currently closed to all traffic (including pedestrian traffic) and hidden behind growth.

Across the rolling hills and rugged landscapes of western Ireland, one can find peculiar relics of a dark chapter in the island’s history.

In addition to the abandoned railroad, Route 66, and its two interstate highways, my hometown of Bolingbrook has (had) another gem that piqued my interest as a kid, one that I never got to see, Old Chicago Amusement Park.