Belly Of The Beast
Saturday, August 22, 2009 at 2:55PM
Timebinder in TRAIN WRECK

In a past post (Shatternooga ChooChoo) I promised to show some of people's penchant not only for viewing the scene of a train disaster but the compulsion to climb all over the wreckage as if it were some giant broken toy.

A logging train that jumped the rails into the ditch with the tender and first car overriding the cab which looks as if it may have been sheared off by the impact.

As if this were a good place for a picnic or outing, men and boys and at least one woman, pose on the wreckage of two engines (very unlikely that anyone in them survived); the boy sits on the dislocated diamond stack of the one on the right; about as many people as can fit are standing on the boxcar upper left. Strange human behavior, and as I commented previously, train wreck photos sold then – and now. Each print is from unrelated wrecks, 1890s to 1910.

Article originally appeared on Antique Photography & Photo Collecting (http://timebinder.net/).
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