This spike plate, like many others on the B&M Newburyport Branch in Lynnfield, Mass., has been folded as the weight of trains crushed the tie. This is one reason Guilford Rail System abandoned the tracks in 2001. One look at the track condition makes one surprised they were used even that recently. A retired police officer in nearby Wakefield, where the branch begins, told me, "They had derailments over there all the time."

Photographed by Mike Colclough / Black Cat Images, January 17, 2006.
Added to the photo archive by Mike Colclough, January 20, 2006.
Railroad: Boston & Maine.

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