9/11 Freedom Photography – Part 3 of 5

[Jimbaux sees skies of blue, clouds of white, bright, blessed days, dark sacred nights, and he thinks to himself, what a wonderful world!]

Hello, everyone.  Yes, today’s song, for this beautiful day of 9/11, is a beautiful song from one of New Orleans’s finest, Louis Armstrong.  9/11 is such a beautiful day, a day to celebrate our freedoms not by waving a flag and dressing one’s self in red-white-and-blue, but, more importantly, to do one’s patriotic duty and exercise freedoms that have been under assault.  That’s what Jimbaux did on this day out of a sense of duty.  This is Part 3 of this essay.  Part 1 involved Amtrak’s Crescent train, and Part 2 involved barges and some Norfolk Southern trains.

We left off last time with CSX’s daily – or nightly – transfer to the Canadian National Railway’s former Illinois Central Railroad yard, Mays Yard, returning to the CSX on NS trackage at London Avenue.  Below, we see him in the same place but from the top of the Elysian Fields overpass where he is stuck behind the UP’s QLINSB or the NS’s 314, whatever you want to call it.

I heard the 314 dump its air, and at that point, I decided to climb back down the bridge, since I knew that it would therefore be a long time before the CSX job moved, and I knew that the crew was already on the law, and that by the time that train moved again, it would have a different crew aboard.

You’ll see that school again later, but in a very different view.

I Forgot Sunscreen

And, for as long as I was going to be atop the Almonaster Overpass, the third overpass I’d climb today, I’d really need it.  Below, we see what are essentially both legs of the wye for the NS, even though these tracks are rarely used as wyes.  At right, we have the track connecting the NS Back Belt to the NS mainline out of town.  At left, we have the track connecting the NS Back Belt to the NS yard.  The 314 had already pulled its head end onto the mainline and then shoved into the yard to do some work by this point.

Do you see the school in the distance in the above picture?  That view looks to the southwest.  This one below looks to the west.

You see the Franklin Avenue overpass from which we shot first thing in the morning.

Remember that caption information can be found in the filenames, which can be found by holding the mouse arrow over the pictures.

Below, we look into NS Oliver Yard.  Our train is buried deep in the yard somewhere.  Do you see the Crescent City Connection bridges off in the very far distance at right?

That’s Florida Avenue in the foreground, and the intermodal yard is off to the left.

Looking back north again, here comes the 314.

That’s I-10 in the background with the CSX mainline in front of it crossing at NE Tower.  The unoccupied – for the last three decades – tower is just to the right of the interlocking.

Here’s the top of a hopper of the 314.

Do you see the conductor on the ground in the below picture?  They are about to shove the train down the wye track to pick up the rest of the train on the NS Back Belt where you saw them leave it earlier.

Moving to the west a bit, we see them begin the shove.

The 314’s crew, like the crews of all NS road trains entering New Orleans, is based in Meridian, Mississippi, and rests in the crew dormitory at Oliver Yard.

Here’s a closer-up shot of the conductor as the train stops for the signals at Terminal Junction to show green.

I don’t know about you, but I rather like the below shot, even though it has focus problems due to being taken with that non-focusing piece of junk lens, the 15-85mm/f3.5-5.6.

Don’t forget that caption information can be found in the filenames, which can be found by holding your mouse arrow over the pictures.  Did I mention that?

Now, we see the train reattaching itself as the cut from Oliver Yard is coupled to the cut from the Union Pacific.  (Remember that this train arrives here as UP train QLINSB.)

This is a daily occurrence here at Terminal and Oliver Junctions.

The Empty Pipe Gondolas and the 355

The QLINSB/314 can be distinguished by the presence of this block of empty pipe gondolas.  They come south and west loaded on the 393/MNSEW.  I believe they are loaded in or around Birmingham or Bessemer.

Well, what you can see above is southbound NS train 355 waiting for the 314 to clear.  You’ll see more of that and more in Part 4.  I actually don’t think the pictures here in Part 3 are all that great, but, remember the reasons for being out at all on 9/11.

I don’t have much else to say right now, but I will have plenty to say in Part 4, which I’ll hopefully get out tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

Jimbaux