[Jimbaux was stuck in a moment for a long time, but today he became stuck in something else.]
You’ve Got To Get Yourself Together
Bon jour, mes amis! We continue onward with Jimbaux’s wet and wacky adventures on Monday on the eastern part of the Lafayette Sub. Hopefully, you’ve already seen and read Part 1. Part 2, below, ends with Jimbaux doing something really stupid.
The rain had made things quite wet in the area, and it vexed the FedEx deliveryman and the folks at Southern Scrap Recycling.
We’re actually looking west from the top of the Wyandotte Bridge here, and even though it’s not a train shot, just like the shot of the MNSEW in Part 1 was the first shot I had done from the bridge since 2005, this is the first time I’ve shot a picture from that side of the bridge.
A New Shot?
Yes, and although this shot barely shows the train (and only shows its headlights), it’s a Jimbaux original, and I, of course, intentionally included that neat cloud formation in the shot.
It’ll get better as he gets closer, and remember that, as discussed in Part 1, the area above was the crucible of Porkchop‘s good photographic eye. In the meantime, and before the train (the Chip Local) gets here, let’s have a view of the action in the scrapyard:
Interesting. Although it’s right next to the track, there is no rail service at this scrapyard. Apparently, everything arrives via barge, which makes me wonder how far away the various scrap arrives here. Certainly, there are enough shipyards nearby to keep this place busy.
And Here’s Chip!
In Part 1, you saw pictures of Chip moving westbound. Keep in mind that Chip just ran around his train in Morgan City and is now heading east. (For the uninitiated, that means that he used the runaround track to move the locomotive from the western end of his train to the eastern end.) Here he is moving east, slowrolling to come to a stop at Patterson Pipe just on the other side of the bridge (on which I am standing.)
Well, that’s a view of this train that you haven’t yet seen, right? Oh, wait, you haven’t ever seen this view of any train, yes. It’s the first of three views of this train that we’ll see from this location as he gets progressively closer. Here’s the second:
For those of you who are getting weary of the seemingly incessant coverage of the UP’s Morgan City Local train, after Part 3 of the wet and wacky adventures of Monday 8 August 2011, there will only be about two or three most posts on this matter for awhile. Coverage of the Chip Local will become very sparse here soon.
Here’s our third view from the Wyandotte Bridge of the Morgan City local running eastbound out of its namesake city.
How’s that? The above picture shows the large role that the petroleum industry plays in southern Louisiana, as the train is not only carrying pipe but is passing a pipe yard as well.
Here’s the view in the other direction as the train stops next to the switch leading into the pipe yard. The locomotive has just decoupled from the train and moved ahead past the switch, and you can see Chip throwing the switch below.
Before setting out the four loads, Chip will go into the track to grab one empty gondola. I anticipate that a few readers will find the below shot surprisingly appealing, with the classic second-generation diesel-electric locomotive profile.
And, yes, the shot immediately above and the shot immediately below are new shots, as even though I’ve shot off of this side of this bridge before this day, I’ve only shot mainline action, nothing in the pipe yard.
This would be a good time to remind everyone that caption information for each shot can be found in the filename, which can be read by holding your mouse arrow over the pictures. I frequently get questions about people about what’s in the pictures, questions that can be answered by reading the filenames.
I Have Descended
Not only did I descend from the bridge, but I was about to descend much further into stupidity. On my way down the bridge, I noticed a few police cars with flashing blue lights at the strip joint at the bottom of the bridge next to the scrap yard. Apparently, as I descended from the bridge and was about to descend into my own version of stupidity, some of the local dirtbags were causing trouble. Yes, I do have a love-hate relationship with humanity.
However, after I descended from the bridge but before I did my own descent into stupidity, I shot the two pictures below, which also show the perch from which I took all of the above pictures. Right as I was taking these pictures, some guy in a pickup truck pulls up near me and stops. I couldn’t tell what he was doing or why he stopped; so, I just presumed that he might have arrived on the scene to watch me, but I just ignored him. Probably since I had just driven by the strip-joints, I was in more of an I-hate-human-beings mood than I normally am, I foresaw some kind of unpleasant encounter with this person we’ll call Mark. Again, though, I just ignored him and took my pictures.
The above picture was taken from ground-level plus the height from my feet to my eyes. The below picture as taken from that level plus the level from the ground to the top of my truck. Do you notice the difference? I do.
Do you see Chip riding the rear gondola in the above picture? Do you see how the empty gondola that they’ve pulled is a head of the four loaded gondolas they are about to shove and set out?
A Real Jimbauxleta
Right after taking the above two pictures, Jimbaux begins his final descent into stupidity. I decided to move west down the little road you see in the above pictures so I could get closer to the train. If you look back at the ninth picture of Part 1, the second picture of the MNSEW, you’ll see just above it that I wrote something about paying attention to the gravely area at the right frame of the picture. This is about even with where the track into the pipe yard is, and I decided to turn around right at that gravely area (leading to a pumping station or a power substation or something) and park my truck right there. Before I turned into it, I made a mental note of where the gravel driveway ended at a sharp dropoff into a ditch next to a culvert. I mean, I wouldn’t want to drive off of that thing, now would I? There is nothing out of the ordinary about any of this since these are the normal details that any person does while he or she is driving a vehicle.
However, since I decided to park there in that gravel, and since I was successful in my attempts, that detail was something that I put out of my mind once I was parked. That right there wasn’t the problem; the problem came when I changed my mind, moved the truck out of park back into gear, and decided to move the truck up a little further east to get a better shot, all while this “Mark” person was watching me from a distance in his pickup truck.
It’s A Long Way Down To Nothing At All
Yeah, I’m guess you’ve already figured out what happened. I moved the truck a bit further up the road, and the right front tire made a really sudden drop. Dammit! I put the beast in reverse, but I was spinning my wheels, quite literally in this case. I got out to give the situation a visual inspection to see what I could do about it. Afterall, I’m actually quite good at driving vehicles out of muddy jams. However, when I got out and took a look, I realized what I should have known and would have known had I not put the visual detail out of my mind before. This was not at all a case of being stuck in the mud. There were straight vertical drops of wood and concrete with which to contend. I was, quite literally, down in a hole.
Holy mother of alligator piss! I’m really stuck now! What in the hell am I going to do?
Stay tuned for Part 3.
Jimbaux
{ 3 trackbacks }