Whistle Stop ...

“There’s something about the sound of a train that’s very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.”

       ~ Paul Simon

       ~ American musician

         ~ born 1941

The recently restored Dragon Cement Co. Inc. No. 1 railroad car located along the Ironton Rail Trail ~ which which loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay and North Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania ~ is depicted in this painterly, HDR image I captured on a late March afternoon in early spring.

A Whistle Sign can be seen in front of the car with the description: “This whistle sign once stood to the west of the Center Street Stiles Crossing on the Ironton Railroad. It was saved on March 1990 by John and Jim Rowland just prior to the scrapping of the railroad.”

In rail transport, a whistle sign ~ or whistle post or whistle board ~ is a sign marking a location where a train driver is required to sound the horn or whistle.

The Ironton Railroad was a shortline railroad in Lehigh County. Originally built in 1861 to haul iron ore and limestone to blast furnaces along the Lehigh River, traffic later shifted to carrying Portland Cement when local iron mining declined in the early 20^th century. Much of the railroad had already been abandoned when it became part of Conrail in 1976, and the last of its trackage was removed in 1984.

 

In 1996, Whitehall Township purchased 9.2 miles of the right-of-way from Conrail, transforming it into the Ironton Rail Trail.

 

Dragon Cement Co. is a cement supplier in Thomaston, Maine.

 

Red-Winged Spring ...

“A day comes in the springtime

When Earth puts forth her powers,

Casts off the bounds of winter

And lights him hence with flowers;

And then by marsh and meadow

And by the silvery sea,

Goes up the red-wings’ chorus:

On-caree!

 

… Hope is a roving gypsy

With laughter on her tongue,

And blue sky and sunshine

Alone, can keep her young;

And year by year she lingers

Under a budding tree

To join the red-wings’ chorus:

On-caree!”

      ~ “The Chorus”

         ~ 1902

       ~ Dora Read Goodale

         ~American poet

         ~ 1866-1953

A red-winged blackbird joins in the chorus of “On-caree!” as sunset looms on an early spring day in March along the Jordan Creek Greenway Trail at Covered Bridge Park, Orefield, Pennsylvania.

 

Early Spring Postcard ...

“Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn.”

  ~ Lewis Grizzard

   ~ 1946 ~ 1994

 ~ American writer & humorist, known for his Southern demeanor & commentary on the American South.

The feeling of early spring pirouettes on the waters of the Jordan Creek as they spill over Wehr’s Dam, built in 1904, to flow beneath the historic Wehr’s Covered Bridge, creating a picturesque early spring postcard at Wehr’s Covered Bridge Park, Orefield, Pennsylvania.

The wooden covered bridge in South Whitehall Township is a three-span, 117-foot long Burr Truss bridge, constructed in 1841. It has horizontal siding and a gable roof. It crosses the Jordan Creek and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

I shot this image in the late afternoon of March 24, 2024, less than a week after spring had once again awakened the land.