The Drummer

The Trackside Photographer
August 24, 2017
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It’s 1910.

The drummer stepped off the westbound Austin & Northwestern train onto the wet wooden platform, a carpetbag in one hand, a leather-sheathed cardboard sample case in the other, wishing he had booked another night in Austin at the Depot Hotel. He was glad it was only sprinkling when he walked the few blocks from his hotel to Austin’s Union Station. With a sigh he sets both down, pulled his coat tighter around him in a useless attempt to set off the bone-chilling dampness of the evening. If it weren’t for the rain – a downpour of the kind seemingly known only to Central Texas – and a washed out bridge a few miles up the line, he’d be spending the night in Llano at the Dabbs where he had reserved a room. Picking up his bags he fell in with his fellow passengers, all but a few, stranded like himself, toward the large hotel across the tracks (continue reading)

[The Railroad Hotels of the Austin & Northwestern/Houston & Texas Central from Austin to Llano: Depot Hotel, Austin; Antlers Hotel, Kingsland; Dabbs Hotel, Llano]

Railroad Town: Taylor, Texas

The Trackside Photographer
July 18, 2019
(External Link)

The Texas Eagle glides into Taylor, Texas. Ten-twenty-two A.M., on time, amazingly.

A few passengers wait on a bleak, crumbling concrete and brick pad to embark. It is a good thing that Amtrak is on time. There are no restrooms, or other amenities. Other than a small covered space with a few picnic tables there is no waiting room for shelter from the hot Texas morning sun, not even a rest room. A far cry from the once magnificent depot that stood in the same spot. Demolished in the 80s, it seemed then – as it still does today -- that Taylor wants to separate herself from her once booming past as a major railroad junction (one of the oldest in Texas) and shipping point. For most of the 1900s, Taylor billed herself as the “Largest Inland Cotton Market in the World.” (continue reading)

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