Today, Friday 27 September 2019, five years to the day after Weekend Whoadification Won, I photographed the Louisiana & Delta Railroad’s Abbeville Branch train.
Here it is, behind the LDRR 1846, at South Young Street in Abbeville.
There was some industry here served by the railroad years ago, and there is still piece of track in that field.
Yes, I photographed the cars. Is that okay?
The train had 10 empty hopper cars and two tank cars, one of which is the one that I saw arriving in New Iberia two afternoons ago.
I wish that that old SSW hopper car still had the big “COTTON BELT” lettering on the side.
I like these old hopper cars.
Here is the tank car that arrived in New Iberia from the BNSF Railway (via the L&D job from Lafayette) two nights before.
And there was another tank car that had been in New Iberia probably a week.
The tank cars are abound for Coastal Chemical.
Here is the train arriving at the mill, crossing South State Street.
These views or from South Main Street.
There is plenty happening here!
Hey, the crew left the cars way back and hanging over the South Jefferson Street! Why?
We’ll find out soon.
Hey, there is Chris, checking out the switch at the western end of the runaround track.
So, stop and look really closely in the background of the right part of the above image, and see that they left most of the train past South Saint Charles Street; you’ll see why shortly.
That structure in the right background is the remains of the hull loader, when rice hulls were shipped by rail from here, which stopped probably more than a quarter of a century ago.
There is CV!
They are crossing both Railroad Avenue and, then, South Main Street.
I haven’t gotten shots like this before.
Hey, man!
This is cool!
I haven’t gotten this view before, either.
I like the remains of the dynamic brake grid on the 1846.
I like these old buildings.
Now, the 1846 is pulling the cars from the former packaging plant.
The rust is okay, but the graffiti is not.
I told you on August 16 what I think of graffiti.
That switch is tough.
CV walks ahead.
So, I left and went to South Saint Charles Street to see the rest of the train.
Here is a cropped view of the image above.
I guess that I returned to South State Street to see the crew pull the cars from the former packaging plant.
Then, it shoved these outbound cars down what remains of the branch mainline to Bayou Vermilion.
Below is a cropped version of the above image, and it’s something that is different, I think!
I like it.
CV walks somewhat laterally from the track in order to protect the shove from a distance.
I have the graffiti.
I would like to have seen railroad action on the line from here to Kaplan and, especially, in Kaplan itself.
Now, here is a different view, with this cut of cars blocking South Main Street while the crew goes to couple to the first inbound cut.
Now, CV protects the shove.
Here is a cropped version of the above image.
I hope that CV likes these pictures!
It’s good to get human-interest shots among the purely train shots.
That’s a tight curve.
Now, here is a different view.
Please note the cutes that are there to blow rice into the hopper cars.
CV dismounts!
Okay, now, with the work there done, it’s time for the 1846 to head back east to grab the rest of the train still sitting just east of South Saint Charles Street.
The 1846 approaches to couple to the eight-car cut.
I really wish that that clinic would find another place for its dumpster.
The train blasts off!
Here are the wide-angle views.
Now, it’s time to grab those outbound cars that he earlier pulled from the former packaging plant that have since been sitting on the stub of the end of the branch for almost a half-hour, and it looks like a tractor-trailer truck has been stuck at the crossing for a while.
Let’s see a cropped version of that image.
That’s the closest I’ll ever see to what it looked like to see a train come from the other side of the bayou.
The branch west of here to Kaplan was abandoned in about 1989 or 1990 after a fire at bridge west of here.
Now it’s time for the crew to pull some outbound cars from the main mill complex.
Some rice-mill employees are watching the action!
The cars illuminated in the background of the image are to be spotted in the mill tracks in the foreground shorty.
CV waves at me again, and you can once again see one of the tank cars, which is bound for Coastal Chemical on the return trip.
CV is a good dude.
Now, it’s time to shove the inbound empty cars into the mill, and we see that same truck, now in the train’s way!
It out of the way, we see CV protecting the shove and another truck, a rice truck, to the right.
There is plenty of action here in this little city!
I like that.
The image below is a cropped version of the image above.
CV has got this under control. He is a seasoned professional.
I like railroad-owned hopper cars.
I like how, in the below pictures, you can see the locomotive to which he is radioing messages.
At some point around this time, a mill employee, someone whom I surmised may have had a low-level managerial role, asked me, “what are you taking pictures for?”
I didn’t know how to answer this question and don’t remember how I answered. “for”? I don’t know. I don’t know what I am doing this “for.” What kind of question is that? What does it mean?
And, with that, we bring the picture-taking today to an abrupt end, and I do not remember why, though it may have had something to do with the light being bad for shots as well as the graffitied cars.
So, there.
I am weary, but this was a good outing.
I just wish that most of the people around here weren’t homicidal maniacs.
Oh, well, good night.
Peace.
Jbx
