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October 1939. "Railroad crossing near Shaftsbury, Vermont." Medium format negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
All it needs is to be taken in the dark with a truckload of flash apparatus. Oh, and a train might be nice, too.
This is most likely the main line of the Rutland Railroad Co. The Rutland Road went into receivership on May 5, 1938, and was still operating that way when the picture was taken. It recovered a bit during WWII but lost most of its stone, milk and passenger traffic in the 1950s and was bought by the State of Vermont in 1963. It is still(?) state-owned as the Vermont Railway Inc., and does see some traffic.
Shaftsbury was just north of the Rutland's connection to Troy via North Bennington, which was one of the more profitable parts of the route because it allowed traffic from Albany and points south to go north to Montreal via Rouse's Point, N.Y., without traversing of the mountains on the south and west side of Lake Champlain via Plattsburg.
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