A Curb Line That Remembers a Track

The five questions

The same five questions, asked of every front

What it was built to do	Carry a freight spur off the main line into a yard behind the block, crossing the street on a shallow curve.
What happens there now	A street like any other, except that the sidewalk bulges outward on one side and comes back in on the other, for no reason a driver would ever notice.
What you can still read off it	The curb. Granite curbing was cut and set to the alignment, and nobody has ever had a reason to pay to move it back.
Where you can stand to see it	The corner at the top of the block, looking down. From ground level the curve is invisible and from the corner it is obvious.
What has gone for good	The rails, the ties, the crossing planks, the gates, the yard behind, and the buildings the yard served.

Why the curb outlives the track

Because granite curbing is set in concrete, is a hundred pounds a length and is nobody's priority.

Removing rail is worth doing: the steel is worth money and the crossing is a maintenance liability. Re setting curb to a straight line costs money and returns nothing. So the rails come up in a week and the curb stays for a century.

Cost of removal, not importance, decides what survives. That rule runs through every step of this axis, and it is stated most nakedly here.

What to look for

• A bulge with no cause. A sidewalk that swells outward at midblock, with no tree pit, no hydrant, no bus stop and no driveway.
• Curb radius. Straight curbing is cut in straight lengths. A curve means somebody set a radius on purpose.
• Paving patches in a band. Asphalt over a filled trench ages differently, and a track alignment appears as a slightly sunken strip crossing the street diagonally.
• A gap in the block. Look at what is behind the curve. Spurs went somewhere, and the somewhere is usually still a gap or a lot.

The diagonal is the tell

Streets are laid out in straight lines and right angles. Rail was laid out in curves and diagonals, because a train cannot turn a corner.

So any diagonal in a rectilinear street pattern is worth following. A fence at forty five degrees, a lot line that cuts across two blocks, a building with one angled wall. Almost all of them are rail, and the rest are water.

Nothing here is signed

There is no plaque, no marker and no mention anywhere on the ground. That is normal for step four and it is the reason this step exists as a category: the evidence is entirely physical and entirely unlabeled.

If you want the confirmation, city and state map collections hold the sheets, and every public library in this state can get you to them.

Practical

• An ordinary street with ordinary traffic. Look from the sidewalk, not from the roadway.
• The curve reads best from a first floor window if you can get one, and from the block corner if you cannot.
• Wet paving shows the patch band better than dry.