Chip At Raceland Junction

[Jimbaux wrote a song for everyone.]

Met Myself A Comin’

Here’s a shot of The Chip Local coming into the Raceland siding westbound at Raceland Junction while I was on my way to the farm early on the afternoon of Thursday 11 August 2011.

Raceland Junction is a place special to the heart of Jimbaux and many in his family history, particularly his paternal family.  It was about at this spot, which, today, is nondescript and largely forgotten, that the men and women of my grandparents’ generation went off to and came home from war.  Today, the only passenger train on this line, the Sunset Limited, doesn’t even stop here, and there are no more railroad structures here.

Saw Myself A Goin’

The dispatcher (MWU) told Chip that he (MWU) had nobody called out of either Lafayette or Avondale, and that he (Chip) had the entire railroad to himself.  The reason, then, that he was entering the siding is to set out that first tank car, an empty bound for molasses loading at Raceland Raw Sugars.  Do you see that yellow speck at the rear of the boxcar?  That’s Chip!

If the black ‘earth’ in the foreground looks a bit weird, it’s for good reason.  Until recently, a stagnant artificial pond occupied this site.  Why is it being filled in with runoff from the cane processing at the sugarmill?  Shouldn’t that be of EPA concern, or something?  To fully answer both of these questions, one must realize that the pond was artificial in the first place, and a half-century has passed since the pond served its initial purpose.

Remember that railroads long ago were operated by steam locomotives, which required plenty of water (which is one of many reasons why they aren’t used anymore.)  When the New Orleans, Opelousas & Great Western Railway built this line in the 1850s, it merely dug groundwater ponds next to the track in different locations.  Here in Louisiana, our water table is not very deep at all!  This is why we usually bury our dead above ground.  Some ponds like these still exist east of here, and about 15 miles west of Raceland Junction, two still exist at Schriever, a place where two branchlines (the Napoleonville Branch and the Houma Branch) radiated from the mainline until the 1990s.

Wrote A Song For Everyone, And I Couldn’t Even Talk To You

What, you’re not listening to today’s song?  You might recognize the second tank car in the train.  It was part of the train the day before, but, apparently, Chip highballed the setout.  Anyway, the car was bound for the Discovery Gas Plant (Texaco) at Vallier, next to Paradís, and it stayed there for about a week.

If You’re Tired of the HLCX 3863 . . .

. . . then, take comfort, because the above picture could be the last time that you ever see that locomotive on this website.  As of the week after this picture was taken on Thursday 11 August, it’s no longer the power on The Chip Local.  So, if you’re tired of that locomotive, you almost surely won’t see it here anymore.  Oh, wait.  You’re not going to see much more of The Chip Local at all here on Jimbaux’s Journal anymore, regardless of what it has for power.  Damn.  Oh, well.

If You See The Answer, Now’s The Time To Say

. . . your answer to my question in the last post about why picture #4 in that post (the first of the two wide-angle views of the LLS51 at Raceland) is so darn cool.  I mean, there are plenty of reasons to that question, but this photo has one element to it that essentially no other train picture on Jimbaux’s Journal has.  PPA gave a response, but it isn’t the one for which I was aiming.  I’ll give you another hint; it has to do with something that you can see in most of my pictures, but it’s in a place where you almost never see it.  Post your answers on that page!

All for now . . .

Jimbaux