Back around the turn of the century, I was a part of a team tasked with doing a feasibility study about converting an out of service line in Bennington VT into a rail trail. I did a report about the history of the line, traffic levels, AND it included a snippet about Francis Poulin and his interesting project.
As a retirement hobby in the early 1960s, Mr. Poulin would walk and take pix of all the RoW of the old Rutland Rwy. He photographed every mile. Taking over-lapping photos. And taking pix of every siding, every bridge, every grade-crossing. Amazing. I talk a little about this in the report that I've attached.
But here we are, deeper into the 21st century now with broadband commonplace and now much of the collection has been cataloged and scanned by the Rutland RR Historical Society onto a website at Middlebury College in VT. Here's a link to that archive .
It's a great look at a local railroad in small New England towns in the mid 20th century as rail traffic was starting to disappear and thus the railroad was slipping away. Very Norman Rockwell-esque imagery.