sabotage

This is apparently a view of some of the damage from the Black Tom munitions explosion of July 30, 1916, eventually held to be an act of German sabotage.
A very similar photo is used with the following caption in a blog entry on Black Tom:
"This view shows the wreckage of buildings on the pier at Black Tom Island, part of Jersey City, N.J., following the explosion of a munition plant set off by German saboteurs, July 1916. The pier is opposite the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor. (AP Photo)"
cryptome.org/eyeball/black-tom/black-eyeball.htm

See also

The Black Tom explosion on July 30, 1916, in Jersey City, New Jersey, was an act of sabotage by German agents to destroy American-made munitions that were to be supplied to the Allies in World War I. (Source: Wikipedia)

Thanks to both of you for this information. We'll make sure that some of it gets into each record the next time we update.

Seems those are Hudson River barges in the foreground. From some searching around, part of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehigh_Valley_Railroad . These folks www.waterfrontmuseum.org/home seem to have one as the home for their museum.

Franz von Papen, German Diplomat. If this was taken in 1915, he was about to be expelled from the US for allegedly planning the sabotage of railways. He would later become Hitler's vice-Chancellor. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_papen#World_War_I

See also comments under

Could it be an MGWR train?

www.westmeathcoco.ie/en/ourservices/planning/conservation...

Oretani Wildlife (Mike Grimes) Certainly could. We're in Westmeath. And is that MGW on the sides of the nearest car?

The world has always been a very dangerous place, although teeming with UNRECOGNIZED UNACKNOWLEDGED beauty. B/o the hominids. Will this ever change before it's too late?

Athlone-Mullingar-Dublin was double track at this time.

Athlone-Clara-Tullamore was not MGW.

Mullingar-Longford was double track.

It could be the Clara branch from Streamstown junction, or the Cavan branch North of Inny Junction.

The vulnerability of the local railways was demonstrated in the early hours of 9 November 1922, when anti-Treaty IRA units burned down the signal cabins at Streamstown, Castletown Geoghegan, and Horseleap on the main line of the Midland Great Western Railway. On the same night, the anti-Treaty IRA used explosives to destroy rail lines at a place called Ballinabarna Bridge between Moate and Streamstown, before commandeering a train. They set the train moving towards Athlone before jumping from the engine. Fortunately, it did not meet any other traffic on the line and came to a stop about two kilometres from Athlone.

A more serious incident followed on Sunday 14 January 1923 when an anti-Treaty IRA unit removed a long section of the railway track on the Streamstown-to-Moate line, at a point in which the line ran over a high embankment and across a bridge. Afterwards, the armed men went to Streamstown station where they boarded a goods train, towing 25 waggons and a second engine from Mullingar to Athlone. At gunpoint, they forced the driver and crew to disembark and then sent the train towards Moate. When it reached the bridge, the point at which the tracks had been removed, the engine crashed into the embankment and most of the carriages were derailed.

Despite the damage, railway workers repaired the line within a day although the Westmeath Examiner reported that the repair crews were ‘approached by unknown persons’, presumably members of the anti-Treaty IRA, who warned them that their efforts were futile. Such threats were, seemingly, common at that time and newspapers reported that multiple drivers and firemen working for the Midland Great Western Railway had received notices warning them not to convey National Army troops. Threats turned to actions on Tuesday 16 January when armed men ripped up another section of the track before hijacking a train travelling between Clara and Mullingar, They subsequently derailed that train by running it over the section of damaged track.