Steam Railroad Equipment, Fèltre, Italy

I recently took the train from Feltre to Venice.  Feltre (in Venetian: Fèltre) is a delightful town in the southern foothills of the Dolomites.  It is on the Stizzon River, only a short train ride to the coastal plain and only two hours from Venice.  While waiting at the platform, I was surprised to see that the water tank used to refill steam locomotives was still standing.

This one is unusual in that it is made of concrete panels held together with steel bands.  Other railroad watering tanks or tank ponds I have seen were wood or steel tanks or pre-formed concrete cisterns.  

Even more surprising, the spigot is still standing and in good condition.  In typical Italian fashion, a utilitarian device is decorated with cast-iron patterns.  The upright tube is decorated with the wings, the logo of the FS, or Ferrovie dello Stato, a.k.a. Italian State Railways.  Possibly steam enthusiast trains occasionally run this route. In the lower photograph, you can see the foothills in the distance.  Feltre is a really nice town with excellent cuisine, friendly people, and a distinctive Venetian architectural character.  I highly recommend a visit.

For some other articles on railroads, please click the links:
Fort Belvoir, Virginia
Markópoulo, Greece
Kalávryta Narrow-Gauge Rack Railroad, Greece
The Athens to Peloponnese Railroad Corinth, Greece
Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad Station, Saginaw, Michigan
Piraeus, Athens and Peloponnese Railway, Greece
Deserted train station, Milies, Greece

Photographs taken with a Nexus 4 phone camera (sorry, that is all I had with me).

Lee Hall Village, Virginia

During a recent business trip, I came across a handsome depot in Lee Hall,Virginia (near Williamsburg, not in the best of condition but appreciated by a foundation and in process of being restored.

From Wikipedia: "Lee Hall Depot was a railroad station on the Peninsula Extension of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O), which was built through the area of Warwick County in 1881 to reach the new coal export facilities at Newport News on the port of Hampton Roads....Lee Hall Depot became a very busy railroad station after the establishment nearby of Fort Eustis (originally named Camp Abraham Eustis) in 1918, with freight and heavy troop movements."

"Lee Hall Depot (no longer is use) is the only surviving C&O structure of its type on the lower Peninsula. It is the only survivor among five stations which were located in Warwick County..." AMTRAK trains may stop here in the future. I am gratified to see historic buildings like this saved from being torn down. They say so much about how we built this nation and how people lived and worked. How many US troops and prisoners-of-war passed through this depot?

This former service station was across the street from the depot. Hundreds of these simple stations were built as the road system expanded in the 1920s and 1930s. Most are now gone, so it is nice to see this example still standing.

A contemporary Hummer or behemoth SUV would barely fit under this roof. (All photographs taken with a Sony DSC R-1 camera.)

Railroad Depot in Mound, Louisiana

Mound is a farming community just north of Interstate 20 about seven miles west of the Mississippi River. During the early 20th century, a gent named George Yerger owned the land, which then was well-populated with tenant farmers. Like many farming centers, it once had a railroad depot, which served as the link with the outside world in an era before many people had motorcars.

The depot in Mound was a 1-story wood building with wide eaves to provide protection when material was loaded and unloaded from rail cars. The depot probably dates to the early 1900s, but a January 2005 article in the Vicksburg Post did not list an exact date. It had not been in use since before 1958.

The depot was unusual in that it still had White and Colored labels on the doors. Considering how common this practice was up through the 1960s, it is surprising how seldom you see signs like this now. Sadly, the depot is gone. I do not know who bought it and if it was moved or demolished.


The elegant little green shotgun shack is the only one left on the property. There were probably many in the early 1920s to house farm workers. A reader stated that this was used as a doctor's office by Dr. John Yerger in the early 1900s.

The clapboard farm building is a typical example for farms in the South.

All photographs taken on Kodak Ektar 25 film with a Rolleiflex 3.5F camera with 75mm f/3.5 Planar lens (5-element version), tripod-mounted. Ektar 25 was the finest resolution color negative film ever made. The negatives were scanned on a Noritsu professional system.