Former Railway Ireland

It occurs to me that there is hardly any difference between our landscapes. I am in NW Missouri, USA. Rolling fields of green, with scattered farms. I'll bet that you have many more of the old hand-laid stone walls lining your farmlands, from where the farmers hand picked the rocks after every spring plowing. Those are kind of rare in this part of the world.

My mother-in-law even has a similar abandoned railroad right of way as her driveway. It's 4/5ths of a mile long, with an old stone arch over the creek.
 
Hi there !

You see we are only 3,000 miles removed and so much in common. During the famine, many walls were built on Anglo Irish Estates as a means of keeping the tenants employed.

The remains of many great estates are to be found and will always be characterised by these walls and mature planted trees e.g. oaks, limes, beeches.

I have a particular interest in these old estates, however because of the Corona lock down I am tied down for the mean time.

Take care !
 
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I had always assumed that the walls were both a method to assert property claims and as a convenient means of storing the rocks when removed from the fields, which is the most common walls we find in the midwest USA.

It is actually pretty easy to ascertain the builders motivation by evaluating the construction of the wall. If it is dry stacked with plain field stone and no evidence of work by a stone mason; the wall was put there as a good use for the rocks that were picked up nearby.

Stone fences like this:
1587487198526.jpeg

Scene from the Flint Hills of Kansas
-which curiously, have no flint whatsoever! They are all limestone.

If, however, the stones are cut to fit, or there is mortar between the joints, then it was built by a proud property owner that wished to invest in maintaining the property line.
 
I shall have to take my drone out to the Flint Hills and get some pics. If you like vast expanses of green fields with very little evidence of humanity, it's a great place to go. I love traveling through the area, as there is evidence of many old farms from the 1800's visible, but it is as though humanity almost moved out of the area in the early 1900's; probably mostly during what we call "the Dust Bowl" days of "the Great Depression".

I'd go here: Scenic Views Bazaar Cattle Crossing

1587489895828.png


I think the current unemployment imposed by our government will vastly exceed the infamous Great Depression, however.

At least we don't seem to be suffering from any of the draconian restrictions that I hear about in other countries. For now, we can go anywhere we want, hang out anywhere we wish, so long as it doesn't involve large groups of more than 10 people. I go to work every day, and I am not fond of large groups anyway.

I'd post a video of my in-laws land with the long RR right-of-way driveway, but I haven't put up a video but once on YouTube. So...some training time might be involved.
 
Pictures and video are worth 1000 words many times over. Nice message.
 
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Thank you for your post UAP and your photos pdq ...... this VERY interesting. I hope both of you can share more here :)
 
As I was explaining to my wife why I wanted to post 360° pictures on Google, I went back to the Cattle Crossing (posted above), and little did I realize, there is already a drone-360 picture at that location! It looks like it was taken from about 300' up.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to get these pictures posted onto Google Streetview.
 

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