Steamtown: A few years ago.

I like this photo a lot. I took at Steamtown in Scranton, Pennsylvania in June 2010. I don't know who the two gentlemen are, but they have become stand ins for my own great-grandfather, who was a mechanic on the New Haven at the company's Readville Shops in Boston. I never met my great-grandfather and I have no idea what he looked like, but I know that he worked for the New Haven in the early part of the 20th century and quite possibly even in the late 19th century.

This is the kind of scene I think of when I imagine him working and that is why I have come to like this photo so much. I ride by the Readville shops every day on my commute to Boston. The railroad shops like the New Haven are long gone. But the building he worked in is still there and so are some of the other parts of the complex. Readeville was a pretty big place. I can't go back in time and I don't lament that the world has changed. I am glad though that places like Steamtown are still around so that I can get a glimpse of the people, places and things that are no more.