Mark's Photo Travels

It's getting hot, and it's getting humid. Two things I don't like about this area and two things that keep me indoors. Meaning, I will be posting here much less often until it cools off again. Just thought y'all would like to know.

Update: Follow this link  to list all entries in what became a series. The  Swamp Rabbit Trail , the successful rails-to-trail conversion, currently extends from downtown Greenville to Travelers Rest with plans to extend the trail southward to Fountain Inn. The Greenville County Recreational Department is seeking support for a project to extend the northern end of the trail up to Slater-Marietta. The Swamp Rabbit Trail closely follows the route of the  Greenville & Northern railroad , better known as the Swamp Rabbit Railroad, from downtown Greenville to just north of Travelers Rest matching where the railroad had ended since the mid-1950s. However, as late as 1921 , the railroad ended at River Falls, near Jones Gap, and as late as 1933 in Marietta. This part of the railroad route isn't plotted on any modern maps, being abandoned long ago, making me interested in learning more about the route the Swamp Rabbit railroad took to from Travelers Rest to River F...

When you think of an abandoned railroad in Greenville County, the first and probably only one that might come to mind is the Greenville & Northern railroad, better known as the Swamp Rabbit. Another abandoned railroad used to run into downtown Greenville for many years, the Charleston & Western Carolina. The predecessor to the Charleston & Western Carolina (or the C&WC), the Greenville & Laurens, built a railroad into Greenville in 1884. A 1888 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Greenville shows where the freight depot was located in 1888, between Broad and Court Streets: Terminus in 1888 By 1913, a new freight depot and a passenger depot had been built near Falls Street and McBee Street, where the Suntrust Building is now: Passenger service was ended by the mid 1950s, and in 1973, the successor to the Charleston & Western Carolina, Seabord Coast Line Railroad Company (now CSX), sold off its downtown Greenville properties, including the de...

The Piedmont & Northern railway  or P&N, now CSX, was an interurban railway operating two disconnected lines in South Carolina and North Carolina and was chartered by James Duke of the Duke Power Company. The South Carolina railway line ran from Greenwood to Greenville, Taylors, Greer, and on to Spartanburg. The railway was electrified with 1500 volts DC, until 1954 when the conversion to diesel locomotives was completed and the electrification abandoned. The Enoree viaduct, built in 1913 , has been remarkably accident free except for that one derailment on February 9, 1919. A northbound train passing over the viaduct derailed at its highest point killing 4 passengers and injuring 1 employee and 23 passengers. An investigation into the accident  [ direct link ] concluded poor track conditions and a tie-bar set too low caused the derailment. An electrical substation used to be located downhill from the top of the Enoree viaduct supplying power for the Chick Springs...

I just switched to the Dynamic View template. Now that gadgets are supported, I'm giving it a try on this blog. Comments on the change are, of course, welcome. Update: Page load times were way too slow. Blech. Going back to the Simple template. Update 04/15/2012: Trying dynamic views template again. The page load times improved noticeably.

Earlier in the week I toured some of the small towns of Greenwood, Abbeville, and Laurens Counties with Tom Taylor , a fine fellow I first met in person at Pinckneyville . Tom has already written about his experiences , and I'm ready to share mine. Tom had some time off coming up, and he was ready and willing to spend part of a day searching for ghost towns. After some back and forth, we settled on finding Shoals Junction. The name came to our attention from the South Carolina section of the Abandoned Rails website, more specifically the Ware Shoals Railroad section  of the site. Several small communities surround Shoals Junction and so we decided to tour as many of these communities as time allowed. Turns out time allowed for quite a nice tour! Ware Shoals Ware Shoals was on the way to Shoals Junction so it was a good place to visit first. After a tour of the town, including a drive by the old mill site on Mill St., the Ware S...