Re: Sumpter Valley Quiz Time

Well that didn't take long Taylor. The photo dated 1961 was provided to me by Bob Bergstrom to settle a small point of contention between Martin Hansen and Ron Harr which I was also in on. Ron was of the opinion that the residence now sitting in the location of the Austin depot was in fact the original building much remodeled. Martin believed otherwise. I wanted it to be the depot, but had no basis for an opinion. This was a good natured discussion over libations in Ron's train room. Ron could be a bit touchy about being shown to have gotten something wrong. So here I was one weekend in possession of the photo to prove Ron in error and at Ron's door to present it to him and hoped he wouldn't take it badly. As it turned out he was not home, so I left a copy on his back porch. I got a call from him a few days later and he thanked me for helping settle the matter, but like a lot of photos it brought up a new point of question as to why the water tower remained on the site 14 years after everything else was demolished or salvaged. My guesses are that it may have been useful for filling road watering trucks, and or it was used as part of the water storage system for the adjacent remaining houses. It was spring fed from a spring back behind the balloon track which I guess is probably West or maybe NW. It is shown on the blue print plat maps of the railroad in any case.