Railroad Station, Bristol, Conn. 87.

Railroad Station, Bristol, Conn. 87.

Image showing part of a railroad depot, with a passenger station at left, box car, and freight station at the right. This image is part of a series made by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to cover New England or upstate New York. The quest for images that would be saleable as postcards resulted in the documentation of small towns and small town life at the turn of the 20th century. As the photos were shot, the glass plates were promptly sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street. As they often did, the Eastern photographer would find the railroad depot in those towns that lay along a rail line. Here is Bristol's station, seen from the upper side of the tracks. A covered stairway leading down to the tracks is visible just beyond the passenger station. Built along the Hartford, Providence and Fishkill Railroad Line in the 1850s, the depot itself was located half way between the north and south villages of Bristol, thereby spawning the eventual center of the city. From here passengers and freight could travel to New York City and Boston and beyond. When the picture was taken, the line here would have been in its last years on the New York & New England Railroad system, or in its early years part of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad when it took over prior to 1920.