south end of the Argillite, KY train tunnel, photo from Wikipedia

So, not much to share this Thursday. I’ll spend most of the day on airplanes today until I land in Columbus, OH, jump in my mom’s van, and head south toward Kentucky.

I’ll be in the Ohio River Valley for the extended weekend with my family. The same “neck of the woods” that’s home to Mothman, the Serpent Mound,  the Tremper Mound effigy pipes, Moonville Tunnel, and, since we’re on trains anyway for Moonville, this recent incident mentioned on Loren Coleman’s “other blog”.

I generally try and avoid anything train related. I lost a favorite uncle to a train accident at a young age, and my father and grandfather are both retired railroaders (from the N&W/NS railway), dad maintenance of way and papa an engineer working those same coalfield runs mentioned in the article,  who told me ten times more train related horror stories than a kid ever needs to hear.

Usually I try to avoid trains; but between Loren’s article, talking with my old friend and bandmate Todd Martin, who penned the tune “Moonville Tunnel” for his band Mothman while I was percussionist for the group, and seeing a series of photos of iron blast furnaces and remnants of the associated Eastern Kentucky Railway on a friend’s Facebook, it seemed like the trains wanted to be talked about. Or at least they wanted links posted. And I promise to be back next week with some neat hillbilly ghost stories and photos.