Still quite tired from my big Mobile-Gulfport day yesterday, I got up this morning on this Monday 6 January 2020 to do more saying goodbye to the New Orleans area.
I left the crib just after 08:00 today.
I checked out what remains of Bernadotte Yard.
These are self portraits at what remains of a once-important Southern Railway yard, an area that also has meaning to my pal The Mid-City Marine.
Moving on, and doing so via automobile, my target this morning was the neat New Orleans & Gulf Coast Railway that was such a pleasure for me to experience in my glory days in the late aughts, but, on the way there, I stopped at the Kansas City Southern Railway yard in Metairie.
This place, too, had some meaning to and for me, especially since I made social connections here that have, like some of my other connections, become frayed in recent years.
That is a difficult subject for me.
I miss the old yard tower there.
The tower, which I last photographed in July 2010, was demolished a couple of months later.
So, that done, I continued on to the W’ank.
I landed on Marrero Yard, the first time that I ever photograph there.
This is a yard job working on the western end of what is known as “Harvey Yard”, which is very strange to me, since this is in Marrero, and since NOGC has a couple of tracks that could, stretching the definition of the word “yard,” be called yards in Harvey.
This is okay, but it’s nothing like the NOGC of glory days and places.
Yeah, look at this.
I left, continuing eastward to the more glorious areas of the NOGC, and, 10 minutes after taking the above image, I got ahead of the morningly eastbound train to Gouldsboro Yard, which I was able to do only because there was an obstruction in the track!
The pickup truck is an NOGC (or RGPC) pickup truck dealing with the delivery truck that is fouling the track, preventing the train from entering the trackage on Fourth Street.
The train is stopped, waiting on the driver of the delivery van to move the van.
This happens often enough on the NOGC. A crew with a truck like that usually precedes a train through the street-running trackage.
Now, with the obstruction out of the way, the train resumes its eastward journey.
Again, I wouldn’t have been able to get this shot without the obstruction being there, because the train would have passed by the time that I got to this location!
I wish that I could have seen and photographed Southern Pacific locomotives moving things other than tank cars on this ex-SP track!
Here is another view that I have never done before.
This is a broadsideish view up Hamilton Street toward downtown New Orleans.
Well, this view shows the full name of the railroad on the hood of the locomotive!
Now, the train is entering Gouldsboro Yard.
This yard is formerly of the Texas & Pacific Railway, later the Missouri Pacific Railroad.
Until the middle of World War II, the T&P used a rail ferry to cross the Mississippi River to access its Race Street Yard and interchange with eastern railroads in New Orleans.
The train had 34 cars, all tank cars. This is mostly a tank-car railroad.
The above picture is taken in the city of Gretna in Jefferson Parish, while the below image taken just down the same street is taken in New Orleans at Ptolemy Street.
Nobody said “Ptolemy” like Carl Sagan said it!
Finally, I am at Lamarque Street, trying to get a shot that I long envisioned but could not do until now.
Come on, locomotives, get into the right position with the skyline of downtown New Orleans across the river in the back, YES!!!
I really like this. I really like this!
I guess that this is a good way to say goodbye to the NOGC.
Maybe I will be able to come back here before the end of the month, but I have plenty more to do. Time will fly.
So long, NOGC. I will always love you.
Let’s also say goodbye to one of my favorite views of the city across the river from Gretna.
I continued west, retracing my earlier path in the opposite direction.
Wait, you now have to pay to park at my favorite Subway, the Subway by the track along the street running in Gretna? Nah, I am not eating there.
Next, I swung by Union Pacific’s Avondale Yard and then went and took a look at Willswood, where I saw this.
That is the Luling Local parked on the Drill Extension track.
I never photographed the Luling Local anywhere past Live Oak.
That’s all for pictures today. After going to Avondale and Willswood, I went to the racist Bud’s Broiler on Jefferson Highway to get a shrimp poboy (they were out of catfish) to go and then returned to the crib to eat and do some badly needed cleaning. Given what I saw in Gulfport last night, I am tempted to return there, this time with my tripod.
Anyway, since the NOGC was crucial to my glory years in New Orleans and the W’ank in the late aughts, I am pleased that I got to tell it goodbye in style today.
Peace.
Jim
