Pearl, IL: Lost/GM&O Depot

(Satellite)

Exploring Pike County IL posted
Pearl Illinois Train Station / Depot. This picture was donated by a member of this page for everyone to see . And will be helping to answer any questions you have about them in the comments , Thankyou !!
David Hahn shared

1950/56 Pearl Quad @ 62,500

1939 Aerial Photo from IHLAP

This town is next to the southernmost bridge on the Illinois River. The next crossing of the river is 40 miles south at the mouth using the Brussels Ferry.

Street View, Jul 2016 via Dennis DeBruler

This town is on the CPKS/GM&O route to Kansas City that crosses the Mississippi River at Louisiana, MO.

John A. Weeks III via Dennis DeBruler
When it was built, the 444' swing span was the longest swing span in the nation.

Barbara Donovan posted 13 photos with the comment: "Photos of Pearl Landing and Pearl, Illinois that I colorized with Gemini"

Wanda Robinson: If that is the depot at Pearl, why does it have Glen Echo on sign? My dad worked at the depot in Pearl for many years.

Barbara Donovan: Wanda Robinson didn't even noticed that but it's the Gemini photo app that makes changes when it's colorized. I always try to post the original under the colored one. I'll see if I can correct that. Thanks!

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Bryn Athyn, PA: Post Office/Reading Depot

(Satellite)

Street View, Oct 2023

Metrotrails posted two photos with the comment:

Metrotrails Then and Now Series: Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania station on the former Newtown Branch of the Reading Railroad.

The line was an important commuter connection between Newtown and Philadelphia, but SEPTA didn't want to run diesels any more, and let it go.

Now, it is part of the Pennypack Trail, with more sections under development. This station still serves as a post office.

Many argue that the trail wasn't needed because there is a trail immediately parallel with the entire route from Betheyres south, and closer to the creek. Still, the trail is more heavily used than the average rail trail.

Ed Bombaro: When SEPTA was forced to inherit the railroad division operations from ConRail in the early 1980s they were unhappy as they didn't want them. SEPTA thus had a slash and burn policy of any railroad services that required significant investment and or required diesel operations. Today the Philadelphia region suffers because of SEPTA's shortsightedness and the city is disconnected from growing northeastern and western suburbs.

Metrotrails shared

Sam Pickard: The old platform canopy was destroyed when a tree fell on it last summer. The station house’s roof was also severely damaged, but has been repaired.

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Doug Leach commented on Photo 1
And an in-between:

Gene Gibbons commented on Metrotrails post

A little bit of history:

"The Bryn Athyn train wreck occurred on December 5, 1921, when a head-on collision occurred on a single line of track near Bryn Athyn station in Pennsylvania. The collision resulted in a fire and claimed 27 lives while injuring 70 others." (Source: Wiki)

Full story on Wiki ... PLUS, a very interesting video by Tom Lynskey on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_TD9bgCrSo

Charles Banks, Sep 2024

Bryn Athyn does have a SEPTA station, but it is south of town on an east/west Reading route.

1950 Frankford and 1952 Hatboro Quads @ 24,000

Henry The Collector, Jan 2021

It seems that SEPTA still owns most of the depots along the abandoned Reading track. The first station I found along the trail was Huntingdon Valley Station (SEPTA).

Oak Hill, OH: 1853-1916 Jefferson Blast Furnace provided iron for the USS MONITOR

(Satellite, it is evidently buried under treetops. See map below.)

Abandoned by Sherman Cahal posted

The Jefferson Furnace is an abandoned pig iron furnace located in the Hanging Rock Iron Region near Oak Hill, Ohio. Constructed in 1854 by the Jefferson Furnace Company, it featured a stack 37 feet high with a bosh 11 feet wide. Fueled by charcoal, its cold air blast was powered by a steam engine and had a daily production capacity of 14 tons. It was later converted to a hot air blast, increasing its daily production capacity. The last cast was on December 26, 1916.

The furnace can be spotted at Jackson Lake State Park.

🔖 Read on: https://abandonedonline.net/location/jefferson-furnace/

Abandoned by Sherman Cahal shared

Also nomadikphotographer

ohiodnr

ohiodnr

I was looking for which hill the furnace would have been close to. Instead, I discovered that Jefferson Lake is man made by this dam.

1912/35 Oak Hill Quad @ 62,500

Beaver, NY: Helper Station

(Satellite)

BR&P = Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh

The Buffalo Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway Company updated
Telegraph office and water station at Beaver in the 1920’s. Beaver was located between West Valley and Ashford Junction on the Buffalo Division. There was a wye track here for turning helper locomotives that shoved trains up West Valley hill to Springville where they would cut off, turn on a wye there and return to Beaver. The BR&P didn’t like to have to run their pushers backwards if they could help it.

Terry Sprague: The helpers were based AT Springville - they worked UP the hill to Beaver, returning light back down the hill to Springville.

Satellite

Beaver was south of Springville.

1958 via Dennis DeBruler

The southern part of the BR&P branch to Buffalo stills exists because of West Valley Nuclear Services.

gwrr_bprr via Dennis DeBruler

I looked at a topo map to check out the contour lines. We can see how the railroad cuts across contour lines at regular intervals next to West Valley. Note that the helper station is called Beaver Siding on this map.

1941/41 Ellicottvilee Quad @ 62,500

Houston, TX: Union Station and Houston Astros Daikin/Minute Maid Stadium

(Satellite)

Street View, May 2022

Threshold 360

Russell Kaye, Dec 2016

Ross Williams, Nov 2018

While researching the BNSF Milby Railyard, I discovered that the 1956 courthouse is gone, but the headhouse of the Union Station is extant. Any depot headhouse that has survived in a big city is worth noting. The Houston Astros retained the headhouse when they turned the train shed and passenger train tracks into their ballpark.

1955/57 Settegast Quad @ 24,000

The roof of the stadium is retractable. This view shows the roof rolled to the side on elevated rails.

Street View, Mar 2026

And this view shows the roof in the closed position. Most of the views with a closed roof have a cloudy sky and probably threaten rain. I wonder why it is closed in this view because there is not a cloud in the sky and they should not have to run the air conditioning in October considering how many views had the roof open. It looks like Minute Maid did not renew the naming rights. Daikin is "a leading air conditioning and refrigeration" company. (The quote comes from a Google Search results. I could not find where Google found that claim.)

Street View, Oct 2019

Another view of the roof in the open position. We can see the upper and lower parts of the roof have their own rails.

Street View, Mar 2026

And this view caught it in the closed position with the empty elevated rails.

Street View, Sep 2022

I knew that the Houston Astros moved out of the Astrodome, but I didn't know to where they moved until now.

Mt. Airy, NC: 1743,1889-2025 World's Largest Open Faced Quarry Closed, It Provided Granite

(Satellite)

polycor_blog

"This quarry was first operated in 1743, well before the Revolutionary War, by the Brothers of the Moravian Church who came to this region from Germany. Operations were limited in those days because of the lack of equipment and technology. The ownership of the quarry site passed through many hands over the next hundred years until 1889, when the Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railroad was built from Greensboro to Mount Airy. Mr. Thomas Woodroffe was selected to build the railway stations along the new rail line, and he decided to use the stone from the Mount Airy Quarry. He organized the North Carolina Granite Company May 14, 1889, and purchased the quarry site. The quarry has been in continuous operation ever since. [until 2025, see below]" [polycor]

Granite from this quarry replaced the marble sheets on the Aon Center in Chicago. (The marble sheets warped and cracked in the Chicago weather and started to fall off the building.)

polycor_aon

Marble was chosen because the architect wanted a white surface. The marble product "flamed" was close to white.

polycor_stones_flamed
Flamed

"In the late 1980s, this instantly recognizable part of the famous Windy City skyline faced a problem: the Carrara marble panels on the 83-story building were cracked and buckling and in need of replacement after only 15 years. In fact, the building hadn’t even completed construction when the first panel of marble cladding came crashing down to the street below. White Mount Airy Granite® was chosen as the replacement stone because it can stand up to Windy City weather while retaining white, brilliant luster over time. Today, the Aon Center is the third largest building in Chicago, and the world’s tallest granite clad building."  [polycor_blog]

The Arlington Memorial Bridge is clad with the Sandblasted product.

polycor_arlington

polycor_stones_sandblasted
Sandblasted

"The neoclassical bridge, whose original construction was launched in 1925, underwent a massive rehabilitation project starting in 2018, where hundreds of pieces of stone were removed from the historic span and were cleaned and repaired. While the original balusters were handcrafted, replacements for the few that couldn’t be repaired were made with high-tech guidance from computers, seamlessly matched with stone from the same quarry. It’s an astounding testament to the stone’s integrity that blocks mined from Mount Airy nearly a century ago match perfectly with stone extracted today." [polycor_blog]

NorthCarolinaMuseum
"Granite from the 90-acre quarry (the largest open-faced quarry in the world) is pure in color and texture; a piece removed today matches a piece removed a century ago."

"NCGC has continued to grow and evolve with the technology and markets. Today, NCGC is honored to be a part of the Polycor family of brands, having been acquired by the world’s largest dimension stone quarry company in 2021. Nothing has changed from an operations and service perspective, and you can continue to expect the same level of quality and trust that has been NCGC’s foundation and which is shared by Polycor across all of its family of brands." [polycor]

But four years later the quarry was closed at the end of Aug 2025!  [mtairynews]

I'd say that was a change. So, were they lying in 2021 or that ignorant of the economics? Either way, it is a rather low "level of trust."

The mother mass is "is about 7 miles long and 1 mile wide, north and south. And it’s 8,000 feet deep." They have mined just 60' down. They estimate that they have enough granite to last another 500 years. The mining process uses a water pressure jet at 40,000psi, a diamond saw and explosives (Primacord). [OurState]

About 336 million years, to be precise. It was then that The Rock formed through a geological process called plate tectonics.

“Our planet is a restless planet,” says Bert Meijboom, a Pilot Mountain geologist who does consulting work for the North Carolina Granite Corp. and is familiar with the granite quarry. “Continental plates are constantly on the move.”

North Carolina sits on the North American plate, Meijboom says. Several times in geological history — remember, we’re talking about millions of years here — that plate has collided with the African Plate. The last time it happened — approximately 360 million years ago — portions of the African plate subsided beneath the North American plate, creating a subduction zone that set the stage for the formation of Mount Airy’s huge granite quarry.

“It was along such a zone, some 12 to 25 miles underneath the American plate, that blobs of molten rock were formed,” Meijboom says. “Due to its relatively lighter weight, the molten rock, also called magma, started to rise toward the surface, intruding the upper portions of the plate.”

The magma slowly solidified over millions of years and formed what’s known as a pluton — basically, a body of igneous rock that develops beneath the earth’s surface. As the plates continued to move and extensive erosion occurred, these plutons — one of which geologists actually refer to as the Mount Airy pluton — appeared at the surface, giving The Rock its designation as an open-faced quarry.

[OurState]

 This is what motivated my research.

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