These stone bridges for the world’s longest and highest railroad in 1840 are still used by trains. They were designed by Whistler’s father (yes that Whistler) and run through the largest roadless tract in western Massachusetts.

There’s about four arches deep in the woods an hour or so from Springfield and you can’t seem them from any road; you have walk on a trail which is a popular local sight. There’s also a few assorted disused bridges, a quarry and a tower remaining from some sort of artists colony or commune from the 1960s or 70s. Amtrak and freight trains still use the bridges and I saw an Amtrak train go by just a few feet from the trail.

The bridges were built in in 1840 as “dry” masonry, that is, stones just piled up without cement or mortar. The rail line was the world’s longest, highest and steepest, and the world’s first to go up a mountain. The lead engineer for the construction was Whistler’s father, that is, the husband of Whistler’s Mother, as in the famous painting by James MacNeill Whistler.

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A few miles down the road you can walk beside the tracks to see some historic railroad structures such as a turntable, or rather the shed for the turntable, and a tower where they took coal out of cars coming from the coal mines, stored it, and loaded into the tenders for the locomotives. In the whole region there’s a lot of houses just a few feet from the tracks without any barrier like in the last photo.

This circular saw blade is about eight feet across and was the world’s largest saw blade when it was built some time in the 1800s. Train cars carry granite blocks pulled up underneath it and the blocks were cut without leaving the car.

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