Kiss Me!

Go ahead! What are you waiting for? I swear. I'm a prince of a guy.

Train Station at Point of Rocks, Maryland

This beautiful station, designed by Ephraim Francis Baldwin and completed in 1876, sits at the junction of the Baltimore and Ohio RR Old Main Line out of Baltimore and its Metropolitan Branch out of Washington. It is also where the B&O met the C&O Canal. The railroad and canal, after a nasty legal fight from 1828 to 1832, shared the right of way side by side along the Potomac river as far as Harper's Ferry. I visited the site this morning with my brother Chris before we hiked a few miles on the adjacent C&O Canal towpath. More photos here.

Apeiron Review, Issue 3

The latest issue of the literary webzine Apeiron Review, featuring two of my photos, one on the cover, is out. It can be dowmloaded in pdf or text format and according to the editors is best viewed on a tablet type device. Lots of great writing too. Enjoy!

Apeiron Review Issue 3: May 2013

Coal Trains

I spend a lot of my free time hiking on or near the CSX, B & O Old Main Line, which seems to carry more coal than any other freight. And I have observed and posted about the recent rail replacements with imported steel rails.

Tonight I was seized by the idea of a poem about coal trains. So I knocked out a two stanza, ten line poem and submitted it to a literary magazine for their consideration. Which means a four month wait until I hear if it will be published in the magazine. So that train is still a long way down the track from appearing here. But if you listen really hard you can hear it coming.

Now I can get some sleep.

Old Coal

During recent hikes along the original rail bed of the Baltimore and Ohio Old Main Line I noticed an old cut in a hill parallel to the rail bed, between it and the Patapsco river.

Yesterday I took a walk through that cut and noticed a few mounds of coal, some antique looking bottles and the top of an old earthenware jug. The coal piles looked like they had been dug out not long ago.

Close by were many scattered common red bricks and white fire bricks. I wonder if this was originally a small temporary blacksmith shop when the original track was being laid in the 1830s and 40s. Or when the original tracks were taken up after that section was abandoned around 1906. It was then that the Dorsey tunnel was excavated and the tracks were relocated on the other side of the river. More investigation is warranted.

The Baltimore and Osaka Railroad

Recent hikes along the CSX rails in the Patapsco river valley indicate that the replacement of the old 1958 U S Steel rails with 2012 Nippon Steel rails is done. It's a good thing the railroad is now named CSX or we would be talking about the Baltimore and Osaka and the Chesapeake and Osaka Railroads.

I met a nice immigrant Russian couple on today's hike and the man expressed surprise that American railroads are still using wooden ties when concrete ties are the norm in Europe. Maybe they can't make and ship concrete ties from Japan as cheaply as they can steel rails.

Two Snakes Along the Patapsco

A little snake

and a big snake.

The little snake was on the original rail bed, now a hiking path, on the Howard County side, upstream from Daniels, and the big snake was on the Baltimore County side just out of the Dorsey tunnel heading west toward the Davis tunnel. The little snake looks like an Eastern Gartersnake.