Saturday, November 22, 2025

Abandoned Guard Station | Restoration Obscura







Photo Series: Abandoned Guard Station | Restoration Obscura 

Inside this guard tower, the slow mechanics of abandonment and the remains of its final shift overlap. The curled paint, hardened paper, and corroded metal show how time works on a building once people leave. Heat, cold, and moisture take over, reshaping every surface in small, steady steps.

But the artifacts left behind still speak to what this place was. The roll of institutional paper in its dispenser, the frozen control console, the visitor stickers on the desk, these are the clues. They point to a space built for monitoring, logging, and managing whoever passed through its door. Even the arrangement of the furniture suggests routine: a place for paperwork, a place for observation, a place to wait.
Every abandoned structure follows similar patterns of decay, yet the details inside this one mark its exact purpose. You can almost imagine the last day here. A final shift change. A sticker left on the counter. A form half-filled. A door locked from the outside for the last time.

The science shows how a room breaks down. The artifacts show how it was once used. Together, they turn this guard tower into a record of both time and the people who once worked within its walls.

Learn more at www.restorationobscura.com.

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Deep Space Objects | 11.20.2025

 



Deep Space Objects | 11.20.2025
[Top] North American Nebula
[Bottom] Andromeda Galaxy 

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, Nor'easter Films, and Restoration Obscura
www.bulmerphotography.com | www.johnbulmermedia.com
All Rights Reserved 



Monday, November 17, 2025

The Ghost Chamber | Restoration Obscura


The Ghost Chamber
Enlarged Erie Canal Lock 4 — Colonie, New York
Lat/Long: 42°44’47”N, 73°42’16”W

Photographed with century-old optical technology, this image looks into the stone interior of Enlarged Erie Canal Lock 4, constructed in the 1840s during New York’s major canal enlargement. Barges once entered this narrow space under towline, rising and lowering between Albany and the Champlain connection as freight moved through one of the busiest transportation corridors of the nineteenth century.

When the canal alignment shifted and the older route was abandoned with the rise of the Barge Canal System in the early twentieth century, Lock 4 was drained, the gates were removed, and the surrounding land was divided into residential lots. Only the chamber remained. What is left is an artifact of tool marks and carefully laid stone, built with a permanence that is likely to outlast any modern-day structure.

The beauty of a ruin like this lies in its survival, a chamber stripped of water and machinery yet still defined by the careful stonework that refuses to disappear.

A new full-length episode of the Restoration Obscura Field Guide Podcast drops tomorrow, wherever you get your podcasts.

More at www.restorationobscura.com.

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, Nor'easter Films, and Restoration Obscura
www.bulmerphotography.com | www.johnbulmermedia.com
All Rights Reserved 

Easton Aurora | 11.11.2025

 


Easton Aurora
| 11.11.2025
Easton, New York 

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, Nor'easter Films, and Restoration Obscura
www.bulmerphotography.com | www.johnbulmermedia.com
All Rights Reserved 

Rocket Engine Test Gantry | Restoration Obscura


Rocket Engine Test Gantry, Malta Rocket Test Station, Malta, New York

The steel gantry rises out of the pines like a relic from another age, a Cold War scaffold built for fire and pressure. From 1945 through the early 1960s, engineers here tested captured German hardware, liquid-fuel systems, and early American rocket engines that shaped the first years of the nation’s Space and Missile programs. The clearing around the stand once shook with controlled detonations and classified propulsion experiments, part of a larger postwar landscape where the United States was learning how to build a new technological frontier.

Today the structure remains fenced, fragile, and off limits. The site is on restricted property and should only be accessed with permission from the controlling agencies. Explore responsibly, respect the boundaries, and honor history.

You can read more at: www.restorationobscura.com.

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, Nor'easter Films, and Restoration Obscura
www.bulmerphotography.com | www.johnbulmermedia.com
All Rights Reserved 



Hoosac Tunnel Ruins Mapping Project | Restoration Obscura


Restoration Obscura Field Note
Hoosac Tunnel Ruins Mapping Project
West Portal Substation
Lat 42°40'33"N, Long 73°05'40"W/

This substation stands approximately 800 feet west of the Hoosac Tunnel’s western portal, just outside North Adams, Massachusetts. It was constructed in 1911 by the Boston & Maine Railroad as part of a tunnel electrification project designed to eliminate the buildup of smoke and gas inside the nearly five-mile-long bore.

The electrification system delivered 11,000 volts of 25-hertz alternating current to overhead catenary lines inside the tunnel. The power originated at the Zylonite generating station in Adams, MA, a steam-powered facility built specifically for this purpose. From there, transmission lines carried high-voltage current to this structure, where it was stepped down and distributed to electric locomotives operating exclusively within the tunnel zone.

These locomotives replaced steam engines through the tunnel itself, resolving decades of dangerous air quality issues. The system functioned from 1911 until the mid-1940s, when dieselization rendered it obsolete. The wires were dismantled, the locomotives retired, and the substations decommissioned.
Unlike the east portal infrastructure, this building survives as a complete, concrete-roofed structure. Inside, its steel support beams, brick-lined walls, and mounting points for transformers and switchgear remain visible. Along the upper edge of the interior, porcelain insulators, the distinctive “cowboy hat” style designed to shed water and prevent arc-over, were once bolted in place.

Immediately downslope from the site, Tunnel Brook runs parallel to the grade, following the historical alignment of utility lines and drainage systems associated with the tunnel’s western approach.
This is a surviving artifact of early 20th-century traction engineering. It represents a brief window when electricity replaced steam inside a mountain, and infrastructure was built to last, not be remembered.
Original images from the early-1900’s in the comments.

You can learn more about the troubled history of the tunnel and why it was nicknamed the Bloody Pit on Restoration Obscura and on the Restoration Obscura Field Guide Podcast.

www.restorationobscura.com

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, Nor'easter Films, and Restoration Obscura
www.bulmerphotography.com | www.johnbulmermedia.com
All Rights Reserved 



Thursday, November 6, 2025

Saratoga Homestead Sanatorium | Restoration Obscura









Restoration Obscura Photo Feature
The Saratoga Homestead Sanatorium
The Architecture of Fear and Healing

“Don’t Dead, Open Inside.”
The warning, spray-painted across the doors, has faded into local legend.
Isolated and built on high ground, the Homestead was designed for air, light, and silence, the ingredients of recovery in the tuberculosis era. Decades later, its red-brick halls stand open to the weather, a relic of changing ideas about illness, care, and the spaces we leave behind.

Read the full story on Restoration Obscura: www.restorationobscura.com

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, Nor'easter Films, and Restoration Obscura
www.bulmerphotography.com | www.johnbulmermedia.com
All Rights Reserved 








 

Friday, October 17, 2025

Forgotten McIntosh Vault | Restoration Obscura | Albany Rural Cemetery









Abandoned McIntosh Vault | Albany Rural Cemetery 
Menands, New York 
Photographed for John Bulmer's history Substack Restoration Obscura.

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, Nor'easter Films, and Restoration Obscura
www.bulmerphotography.com | www.johnbulmermedia.com
All Rights Reserved 
 

 

Abandoned Vault | Restoration Obscura | Albany Rural Cemetery







Abandoned Vault | Albany Rural Cemetery 
Menands, New York 
Photographed for John Bulmer's history Substack Restoration Obscura.

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, Nor'easter Films, and Restoration Obscura
www.bulmerphotography.com | www.johnbulmermedia.com
All Rights Reserved 

Sunday, October 12, 2025

Iris | 10.09.2025


Iris | 10.09.2025
Grafton Lakes State Park. Grafton, New York

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, Nor'easter Films, and Restoration Obscura
www.bulmerphotography.com | www.johnbulmermedia.com
All Rights Reserved 

Saturday, September 6, 2025

1940 Project | One Room Brick Schoolhouse

 






1940 Project // 1830s Brick One Room Schoolhouse
Brunswick, New York

Captured with a 1940s Battlefield Survey ANSCO large format camera. Part of an ongoing series of subjects that could have been captured in the 1800s, honoring both history and the antique analog process.

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, and Nor'easter Films
www.bulmerphotography.com
www.johnbulmermedia.com
www.noreasterfilms.com
All Rights Reserved 

1940 Project | Various Locations, Capital Region











1940 Project | Various Locations
Capital Region

Subjects across various locations in the Capital Region, chosen for their timelessness to fit the analog nature of the process. Paper negatives created with a 1940s-era Ansco Field Camera, War Department edition, originally designed for battlefield survey work.

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, and Nor'easter Films
www.bulmerphotography.com
www.johnbulmermedia.com
www.noreasterfilms.com
All Rights Reserved 

1940 Project | Grave of Unknown Civil War Soldier




1940 Project | Albany Rural Cemetery

The Grave of the Unknown Soldier, Albany Rural Cemetery. Two views of the Civil War memorial, rendered on paper negatives using a 1940s-era Ansco Field Camera, War Department edition—originally designed for battlefield survey work.

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, and Nor'easter Films
www.bulmerphotography.com
www.johnbulmermedia.com
www.noreasterfilms.com
All Rights Reserved