Great "airborne" shot of the station area around the NYC/Big 4 line at Vienna, Illinois, taken in about 1948. Agent H.C. Settlemoir climbed the railroad's water tower to take this picture. View looks South, toward Cairo. CAPT Rex Settlemoir Photo
Roger, thanks for another historic photo. Interesting that Mr. Settlemoir climbed to the top of the watertower for the pic. Back then we could do that kind of stuff without being chastised.
I agree, definitely not a standard NYCS design. Though this is a great photo showing how many small towns in the '20s, '30s, and '40s had one team track or siding serving one or two customers. Hoosick, NY was a similar small town that the B&M served with a short siding for a feed store and one car a month at most. Hoosick also had a flag stop station, but no employees. Though it did have a mail crane with once a day pickup. Those were the days when railroads were the life blood of small towns. I wonder how many railroad owner/managers wish they still had those tracks now that those "small towns" have grown with populations in the tens, or even hundreds of thousands?
In the days of timetable and train order operations, there were many places which had an open office just for handling train orders. They might have no industries at all for billing purposes.
