philly

I took a trip up to the abandoned Reading Railroad Trestle 2 weeks ago with Steve, Thad and Andi for the afternoon. It was my second time up there and the landscape had changed a good deal. I last went up in November of 2005 and photos of that trip are up here.

On the last trip up, my group couldn't go south from our entry point, but this time, the brush was cut down and we could. But it was north first. All the bicycles that were up there last time were gone. I think we only found a few bike frames and tires. There were still several shelters under the old Spring Garden station, but the graffiti on the station was new. Walking all the way north to Fairmount Ave between 8th St and 10th St, we saw some new construction across the street right on top of where the tracks used to extend.

We turned around and trekked all the way down to Vine St which yielded a nice view of the new skyline. After walking down from the trestle, we went to get some grub (it was a busy few hours of hiking around up there!) and we saw an older couple coming down from the trestle as well. It seems to be a pretty well known section of accessible abandoned property.

Click here for a photoset of shots from the trip. A few of Andi's shots starting here and one from Steve.

I'm not sure what happened to the Reading Viaduct Project, but it seems to be defunct. Paris's elevated tracks converted into a park, La Promenade Plantée [wiki), is apparently one of the more popular parks, go figure. Some photos of the park by rion.nu. NYC residents have formed Friends of the High Line (wiki) to turn a set of abandoned elevated track into the second elevated park in the world.

I'd love to see the abandoned trestle turned into a park here in Philly, but the rest of the existing Fairmount Parks System needs a good deal of TLC already. But who knows what will happen with the Super Mayor. Also, according to a commenter on one of my trestle photos, the designer of the NYC project is a Philly resident so you never know what could happen…

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