Full disclosure — there is no ghost train in Roanoke, Virginia … at least as far as I am aware. In our Propaganda Era, I am loathe to start even a harmless urban legend. (Santa Claus is quite real, however.)
Christmas card, Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company, 1899. Commercial color lithograph.
Roanoke, Virginia.
Roanoke, VA. December 2021. Unfortunately there were no sightings of a ghost train. (I couldn’t wait all night.)
I am endlessly trying to get juuuuuust the right photo of St. John’s Episcopal Church with the Mill Mountain Star in the background. I’ll probably never get there, but sometimes the results are fun.
As I’ve noted in the past, this is at the corner of Elm Avenue and Jefferson Street in Roanoke, Virginia.
I am not an excellent photographer by any means, but I’d like to think I got lucky with this set of pictures. I set out for a nice, long walk on a temperate Autumn Friday — and decided to cross Walnut Avenue Bridge for the first time. I was lucky, because the setting sun seemed to set Mill Mountain’s trees ablaze. (And I didn’t even realize I’d be treated to a great view of the Roanoke River beside it.) What a nice and unexpected turn of events at the end of a November day.
I’m sorry, as always, for the shaky-cam! (The bridge was shaking too.)
And it isn’t well composed at all.
But it’s still interesting, because there’s a lot going on here.
No, I’m not talking about the truly abominable malt liquor.
I’m talking about an actual night train in Roanoke, Virginia.
I thought this Campbell Avenue storefront display was pretty cute. What you see is a gargoyle overlooking one of those quaint ceramic villages. (Sorry for the terrible picture … there were reflections in that glass.)
I don’t know if this diorama is an intentional reference to the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence in Walt Disney’s “Fantasia” (1940), but that’s what it makes me think of. It would make it a really clever homemade Halloween decoration.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 