E & LS FREIGHT DEPOT, ONTONAGON, MICHIGAN, MAY 15, 2009
Pentax *ist DS
Sigma 17-70 at 37mm
1/2000 sec. f9.5
ISO 800
Old railroad structures evoke ghosts of lost technologies, especially passenger stations and freight houses. This Escanaba & Lake Superior depot, built by the Chicago & North Western and later used by the Milwaukee Road, is still in service as an outlying office by the crews of maintenance-of-way trucks and freight trains that carry kraft paper and pulpwood south to Green Bay, Wisconsin.
2 comments:
...freight trains that carry kraft paper...OK, picky, picky - but an old papermaker cannot resist pointing out that it's no longer kraft paper in those freight trains. Rather, it's been semi-chemical corrugating medium for more than 50 years now. To be sure, the Ontonagon mill did once use the kraft pulping process to make paper - back in the good old days when a "million dollar" smell wafted over the town. Back then, on those rare days when an east wind blows, it could be detected as far up the lake as the Writer's Lair.
I stand corrected, although I'll never be able to think of those huge rolls of thick brown paper as "semi-chemical corrugating medium."
I have often wondered why the town doesn't stink of paper mill effluvium. Now I know.
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