Sick Sunday Sermon

by Jim on 2012/02/26

[Even when Jimbaux loses, he knows how to win.]

Some stupid sickness has overcome me, a sickness that I strongly suspect that I caught at a certain disease incubator that if I had any courage I’d never enter again, but, oh, well.

About midday today, I couldn’t take the isolation anymore.  So, I liberated myself from my self-quarantining and got out for a little bit of foaming.

I heard Gentilly Yard give a yard job permission to cross the canal and enter New Orleans Public Belt Railway trackage and enter NOPB France Yard.  I figured that this was the daily KCS-bound manifest train, the MCXSH, but it turned out to be something else, seen here approaching the floodgate.

There was a police car that passed where this train was passing.  Do you see what this train is carrying?

Oh, boy!  This must mean I’m about to have the harbor police jump all over me ‘for photographing a military train.’  Nope, dudes, that’s not it; I’m photographing it because it’s a train.  That’s that.  I was suddenly reminded of that run-in that I had with a Union Pacific special agent back in March 2003 and the fact that he asked me “how do I know this isn’t a bunch of bulls**t?” about the foamer notes I had written down on a clipboard, and why I was out there taking pictures on the eve of the invasion of Iraq.  My straight-laced, bowing-to-authority self of the time struggled to find a way to answer to this question, whereas today the answer would be some thing like, “I don’t know.  That’s not my problem anyway.”

Right.  Writing stuff down on a pad is not a crime, nor is it evidence of a crime, but the fact that someone can’t rule that out is not my problem.  I was prepared to have to answer something similar about the fact that I was somehow interested in this military train, especially since I was set up to photograph whatever was coming through the floodgate, not even knowing that it was a military train.

Whatever.  Nothing happened.

Shot Of The Day

Here’s my shot of the day, and you can see the Danziger Bridge (US Highway 90) in the background with the I-10 highrise looming above it as you saw in the Ash Wednesday posting.

Actually, some of you will likely like one of the below pictures better than this one.  Myself, I’m generally not a fan of train pictures taken this close to the train on the outside of the curve at this sharp of an angle at ground level, but the I-10 highrise over the Inner-Harbor Navigational Canal makes this shot for me.

France Yard

Here the train is seen stopping for its crew change at the yard office, where the CSX crew will detrain and allow the waiting NOPB crew to board.

Many of you will probably like the presence of the NOPB switchers in the above picture, something I wish I could feature more here.

Here’s a better shot to close out this post.

How did I do with the colors here?  After this, I needed hydration and to be horizontal again.  That was really all that I could take.  Damn you, sickness!

Comint later confirmed that this train was indeed headed to the KCS, meaning that it’s almost surely going to Fort Polk.  I wonder from where this equipment is coming.

Oh, well, if this post doesn’t make the feds think I’m a useless terrorist, maybe paying for coffee with cash will.  What do you think of that?  To get you in a perhaps better mood, check out these soulful scenes from Oklahoma.

Jimbaux

{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Joe February 26, 2012 at 19:25

Thanks for your sacrifice. Hope your feeling better tomorrow! Stay home, get lots of rest & drink lots of fluids.
Switch to Herbal tea or Decaf for your health.

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2 raydupe February 27, 2012 at 19:23

I like the shot with all the colors, at France Yard during the interchange, Blue/Yellow, CSXT; Red/White NOPB and the yellow golden- rods; good shot..

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3 Howard Bunte February 27, 2012 at 20:11

Hey, lots of vitamin C… fluids like (argh!) herbal teas…with lots of honey in it… (if you can find any locally -produced honey, that might lower your sensitivity to ‘stuff in the air’ which can then tip over into a full-blown head cold/ sinusitis and other good stuff…
nice pics… may well be stuff coming back from Iraq… getting stuff OUT of a war zone takes time and money and TIME… just like if we walked out of Afghanistan tomorrow… probably a year before the last piece of stuff came out… as the advertisements for UPS says, “it’s Logistics!”…
get well… HNB

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4 sienna February 28, 2012 at 12:59

great pictures!! just got back from Amsterdam…. with a cold!! drinking lots of fluids myself 🙂

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5 Howard Bingham March 11, 2012 at 18:40

Mix equal amounts of OJ, honey & rum (your choice, Bacardi a bit on expensive side 😉 ), chug it down as needed & get bed rest…

The above won’t cure you, but at least you won’t be in pain unless you try & drive under the influence & get caught by the boys driving cars or SUV’S with flashing blue & red lights..

Gotta have some humor on a dull & rainy Sunday afternoon 😉

Howard B. 🙂

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6 Alex June 30, 2012 at 13:46

I actually high balled that train somewhere, I think Theodore, AL and watched it go by. Was on a Local.

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7 Steve Hanson February 26, 2013 at 22:25

At first I thought the No Cash for Coffee story was from The Onion. Most coffee I drink costs a dollar or less. Using a credit card for such a small purchase hoses the coffee shop with excessive processing fees. I’m glad someone likes Starbucks, etc., but I drink cheap coffee. It’s a matter of principle.

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8 Angeline February 26, 2014 at 15:49

I guess anything could be viewed as potential terrorist activity if one looks hard enough. There’s vigilance and then there’s paranoia, and there seems to be a fine line that is crossed quite often. Wow, terrorist behaviour in internet cafes, huh?

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