“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”
~ Jack Kerouac
~ 1922 ~ 1969
As if dropped into the spring landscape from a German Christmas putz, I captured this slice of Americana ~ with the American flag billowing in the breeze ~ on a late April afternoon along the Saucon Rail Trail in the Saucon Valley, Hellertown, Pennsylvania.
“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all …”
~ Jack Kerouac
~ 1922-1969
A
railroad signal from yesteryear adds a pop of color to the mid-winter landscape
in this painterly, HDR image I shot on a February afternoon as sunset loomed along the Saucon
Rail Trail, Hellertown, Pennsylvania, when my train of thought turned to the coming spring.
~ Jack Kerouac
~ 1922-1969
It’s a moment frozen in time in the soft stillness in the grey of winter, as three orange balls on the water briefly deliver a pop of color in this abstract image I captured in early March along the Ironton Rail Trail, which loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay and North Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania.
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 20th 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.
