Southington Depot

Growing up on the shore, train tracks meant coastal routes and train stations meant towns on the Sound. Sure, there were those little connecting branches that snaked mysteriously north and often had to be replaced with bus service. But they were inconsequential, their names meaningless words in announcements I didn't have to listen to.

I would probably have continued to think that way if I hadn't moved back to Connecticut, started exploring the inland parts of the state, and found, everywhere I went, evidence of bygone train service. From Putnam to Wallingford to New Milford, there they were: little depots, sometimes converted into restaurants and shops, and sometimes - like this one, in the Milldale section of Southington, which stands beside a section of the Farmington Canal Trail - preserved for educational or simply aesthetic purposes.

I knew that people once traveled throughout Connecticut by train, and that freight service continued on many of those lines long after passengers had moved on to more modern forms of transport. I saw that the train stations inland looked no different from the coastal ones I had been passing all my life. Yet they were exotic to me still, like finding an abandoned seaport in a desert or seeing a car rusting away deep within a road-less forest.

In a way, they still are.

Gather Ye Schoolhouses

When I started this blog I'd never noticed an old Connecticut schoolhouse, aside from this one and this one. The first one that really caught my attention was the one in Beacon Falls, shown here, which I included in this article. And now, as I've mentioned here before, the schoolhouses just keep accumulating. (I think this makes schoolhouse post number 28, and schoolhouse number...I don't even want to count.) Here are a few that I've been saving up, from all around the state.

(From top: Southington; North Branford; Prospect; Branford; Union; Union)

Unexpected CDP Du Jour

This could be a fire lane within a rambling old building in which I illegally stopped to take pictures anywhere. But it's not. It's a fire lane within a rambling old building in which I illegally stopped to take pictures in Plantsville.

A few months ago I would have said, "What's a Plantsville?" But after finding it accidentally a short time ago, I know it's a neighborhood and Census Designated Pace in Southington. (Other sections of Southington include Milldale and Marion. Because it wouldn't be Connecticut if it wasn't just a bit more confusing than necessary.) Plantsville was named not for an abundance of greenery as one might wish, but for brothers A.H. and E.M. Plant, who in 1842 built a carriage bolt factory along the Quinnipiac. Prior to that, this crossroads between Farmington, Waterbury, Bristol and New Haven was called simply "the corners." Before the Plant brothers turned it into an industrial center, it had a horn comb factory, a dry goods store, and a tavern.

Today Southington Center is a busier, more polished place than Plantsville, which has become a little rough around the edges since the decline, in the early 20th century, of its Qunnipiac-powered industries. Well, for all I know it was pretty rough-edged then too. Today, though, despite several streets full of very pretty houses, and an intriguing little collection of restaurants and businesses, it's clearly more of a place that once was than a place that is.

Which means it's a place with metal stars bolted on its brick walls. And therefore a place I'm really glad I found.