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No, really, I'm not. It's just that school's gotten in the way of railroading, and I'm writing an essay on feminine oppression in Casablanca and Vertigo. So when I get back to St. Paul
I'll do some more exploring and find some stuff to look at and photograph for you. Also, if you remember, I'm branching out from railroads this summer, so there'll be something else coming your way in the edgier exploring. Heheh. EXTREME URBAN EXPLORING! TESTOSTERONE! RARRRR!!!
Sorry about that.
So, remember how a while back I came across a railroad that went parallel to the Greenway? I went back there today to see what there was that I hadn't seen in that area.
Well, the first thing I noticed was that it was all covered in those thorny plants which had foiled me before, at least for a short distance. Then it hit a road and... stopped. Yes, it stopped. That was disappointing. I kept going, mostly on the vain hope that what I had seen was NOT the end of the line, and low and behold, it wasn't. I came under a bridge (I'm pretty sure it was Granville running down to the Island, but I could be mistaken) and found a new beginning to the railroad.
It started smack in the middle of a road, and went perpendicular to it. At the end I was on, there was a sort of a chain link barrier with weird stuff in it, I guess to try to keep the trolley that ran on the tracks from going off the end. I think. I know it was a trolley because there was a wire running overhead. Anyway, there was this little shelter with a sign on it saying "Granville Station" so I sat down there to take the first picture.
You can see the bridge and a little of the chain link thingy I was talking about earlier.
So the rails went through this narrow, wet sort of cutting thing between the housing on the south side and the road on the north. There was a fence on the north side, and a high wall on the south. Fun times. So I walked along that for a little while and... then the track split. And so for a while there, there were two parallel sets of tracks running through this valley kind of thing. Then they merged together again. Yeah. That was kinda weird. You can see the parallel tracks and a bridge that I'll talk about in a bit here:
Speaking of the bridge, here's a picture of it from a little closer up. By which I mean a lot closer up.
So when I got under that thing, there was a whole bunch of graffiti, which is what the next couple of pictures are of. They're both quite nice pieces, and the pictures just don't capture the feeling you get from them.
And this one is just begging for a big awwww... because it has hearts. And hearts are adorable.
This is a shot of what lay ahead (a loooong way ahead) from a little ways beyond the bridge.
Yeah, that took a while to walk along. This is a picture from the same place, looking back.
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You can get some idea of the vast amount of paint that's been put on these walls from that last shot. It's truly phenomenal. Not as crazy as some stuff I've seen, but still pretty awesome. A lot of it was quite well done, too. I get really sick of people spraying shit on walls and going, "Yeah, dude, it's art, you can't touch this." Yeah, technically true, but bad art. You could spray a bunch of equal squares on a wall and it would be modern art. I'm not going to rant about this.
So I kept walking, and came out into the open a little after the limit of that last picture, and the track split into three parts: two rejoined into one a little further down the line, the other one went off into a shed, and beyond the shed there was a trolley. Here's a picture of that.
Yeah, pretty weird, huh?
Anyway, just beyond where you can't see in that photo, the track went on more or less a straight shot between chain link fence and foresty-sorts of areas, and that's where I stopped, mostly because I was pretty sure that it ended up joining up with the rail yards right by Waterfront Station, and that was one place I didn't really want to be. So I stopped here, and turned around, and headed home.
But now, looking at a map on Google Earth, I was completely wrong. It doesn't actually seem to extend beyond what you can see on the photo. It either follows under a bridge or I'm just not seeing where it goes. Either way, it's not what I thought. I'll go back sometime before finals and wrap up all the loose ends I've got in this business.
But either way, I went home then. And I took a different route, and so came upon a really cool little park where I took this picture:
And this, in turn, led to a long walk along the waterfront which eventually led me back to the place where I lost the other part of the Greenway due to it being overgrown. But on the other side of a molded concrete faux-brick wall. I would have climbed it... but for the fact that I didn't want to crawl through thorny plants for an indeterminate distance.
So, that's all folks!
Well, for a winter excursion, that went well. Myself and another Railroader walked down a good stretch of track today, starting with the Playground Road up by Fairview. There's a playground there, and a railroad that wanders down across the city and curves around the better part of the residential areas, follows Ayd Mill road down to 35-E and skips from there to follow the highway along until the railroad passes under the high bridge. The first bridge, across Snelling avenue at Marshal, has a ton of gorgeous graffiti on it. It's a quite nice walk, I'll have to go there sometime in the summer, when the snow isn't deep enough to tire me out quickly.
Anyway, we didn't make it very far, we just got to Selby, where we cut off the railway and switched to the roads instead. Sidewalks are better shoveled than rail lines. Simple fact of life, that. No photos, either. I'll get some up for Vancity. I'll get more in the summer.
Looks like Summer will change a lot.
So, as I said, there will be more adventures happening later. If they can be called adventures, anyway. When I get back to Saint Paul for the summer, I'll start doing the Urban Exploring sort of thing. More sewers and fewer railroads, in other words. The upshot of this is that I won't be working alone. Too dangerous, drain running alone. Something happens, no one's there to help you. So yeah. Just thought a preview of what's coming up would be a good thing.
In other news, I've got a few things I need to do before I go back to Vancouver. There may be a post later today.
So... I kinda doubt anyone really noticed that I haven't been posting much. Here's the reason: I don't really like going outside and walking when it's cold. I'm back in Saint Paul, and there's a couple feet of snow down, so it can be hard to walk along railroads without getting majorly cold feet. I feel witty now.
Anyways, updates and wanderings will resume upon my return to Vancouver.
