607, represent!

For the past couple of days I have been in Upstate New York (land of my birth, incidentally), where I have engaged in massive garage-sale attendance, ice cream-eating and local barn sale scouring. When not buying up 25 (yes, I counted) vintage patterns for a nickel each (oh, just wait until I make myself a 1940s swimming suit, ye naysayers!), I've been trespassing into abandoned train depots, taking pictures of long-closed grain silos, and examining dead bats while my sister screamed about contracting rabies. (For the record, I didn't touch the bat. I poked it with a stick to assure deadness, then slid it on a piece of paper for closer investigation. The little fellow was much smaller than I would have imagined, and very sweet-looking...at least when dead. I am scared of bats generally, and cowered in my seat when one started swooping around the movie theater in one of my last visits up here.)

There were no bats in or around the abandoned train depot, which is somewhat surprising when one considers that it's been closed for years. Trains still run through here--usually blowing their horns at 2:30 am--they just don't stop for passengers.




























































After taking these sedate outside snaps, I convinced my normally fearless twelve-year old nephew to crawl through the broken door of the depot with me. Inside we found a bunch of insulation, an old phone, and a bunch of cans of paint, which I used as a makeshift tripod.




















Apparently the insulation scared him, as he then insisted we were going to be murdered, and made me leave.

The next stop was an empty silo. It's also been closed for years, and I'm not sure if there is a plan for the increasingly-decrepit building.

I couldn't find a hole to crawl through here though...plus there were a surprising number of people around, so I had to let the inside remain uninvestigated. Drat!

A few blocks down from the grain silo is this also-closed firehouse. Investigating was out of the question, as it appeared to be on private property, with a bunch of people eyeing me suspiciously from their front porch. Based on the broken windows and the pigeons flying in and out of the belltower, however, I'd guess this place hasn't been used to fight fires in quite some time.

Dejected by the lack of bats and access to hidden mysteries, I consoled myself by heading back to the trainyards, where I found a picturesque loading area of some type:

And, awesome of all awesomeness, a quick jaunt up the tracks on foot yielded this ominous-looking scene:

See? I guess this is what happens to trespassers!