Jimbaux was never really wild but was young.
Yesterday, I heard that “The Wild And The Young” song, perhaps first time that I ever heard it! It sounded like a song from the 1980s, but I wondered why I had not ever heard it.
Today, I went to Eunice and then Crowley to photograph the Acadiana Railway’s twice-weekly train on the former Missouri Pacific Railroad branch from Eunice to Crowley.
This would be the (I think) fourth time that I chase this train from Eunice to Crowley, even though I had never chased this train a year ago! The first chase was on December 22, the second chase was the next week on the 31st, and the third chase was this year on March 30.
The dawn drive to Eunice this morning was very foggy. I ended up accidentally going west at that highway junction west of Branch, and I went west on Highway 365 straight to Highway 13, instead of going north to Highway 190 on Highway 367.
I suddenly remembered as I was driving, due to the fog and due to imagining striking somebody from behind in the fog, my collision which I destroyed my Chevy Blazer on the 7th of December 2001, and how that is almost 20 years ago now! and that I was out hunting trains that morning! I had forgotten about that. That is significant. So, it is bringing back a flood of memories again.
It was a sad thing but an educational thing, to be sure.
I also briefly heard Richard Condon on the radio talking specifically about sport statistics, which, too, brought back plenty of memories, and I turned it off. I don’t need that crap in my life now.
It’s good to be reminded, though, that the more things change, the more they stay the same, as that old saying goes.
Coming into town, I stopped to photograph some equipment.
I like this stuff.
Okay, so, next, I get into town and find the locomotive.
At some point, I probably broke away to get some fast food.
It was uncomfortably warm, even though we were supposed to get – and eventually got – a cold front by around midday.
Headlight!
Dammit! We have graffiti on the cars, which makes chasing this train almost not worth the effort.
But I am here, and so is the train.
Next, I get set up at the Highway 3116 crossing.
The graffiti being on this side of the train was farther back, creating more shot options.
It’s okay, but it’s still a far cry from the branchline trains of my childhood and my youth.
It’s still something of an anachronism in 2021!
C’est la vie.
Next, we are Buckhorn Drive south of town, where I photographed that truck on my way into town this morning.
Here is the train.
That’s a decent graffiti-free shot!
Next, we are at Highway 370.
That’s cool, because it shows rice fields, the old rural highway, and some farm structures.
Here is a look to the northwest to the power plant.
Now, we’ll get some going-away views of the train.
Yes, it has six cars, which is fairly normal for this train, particularly for the Thursday train when fewer cars have accumulated in Eunice than accumulate for the Tuesday train.
And today is Thursday.
I like that shot, and you almost can’t see the graffiti.
Next, we are at Highway 368 in Mowata, which I have read is a spelling of “more water.
The mileposts here are numbered from Brownsville, Texas!
Yes, I am on the dark side of the track here, but that is, I determined, the way to do this shot.
Here is the southward view through the rice-dryer facility.
Next, we are at Thevis Road, a neat place.
Once again, a view that shows more of the surroundings helps to deemphasize the graffiti, almost hiding it.
And, I can use farm equipment next to the track to hide the graffiti!
I really love this broadside view of the train at the crossing.
This next view was a grab shot at Schultz Road. I am on the darkside here, I was trying to beat the train across the crossing, I obviously wasn’t close to making it, and, so, I recognized the quality of the view here and popped this shot off from the driver’s seat of the truck with zero time to spare.
I think that it is one of my best shots of the day.
What say you?
Next, I am at Ellis Road in Maxie.
I am once again making more broadside shots to hide the graffiti on the second car.
I guess that this is okay.
Next, we are at Stakes Road.
I guess that those clouds are bringing our cold front.
Well, I really like that shot!
The head-on nature of it also hides the graffiti.
The head-on nature of it is also because, this being late morning, the sun is swinging toward the front of the train.
Okay, here is a view that I had not done before until today.
This is Hensgens Road.
I’ll take it, but it’s not that great.
So, next, we are at the rice mill in Crowley.
I wish that I knew more about the operations of this mill, as it is very interesting.
Isn’t that neat-looking?
There were tracks down the middle of the street there, though I am not sure whose.
I’ll talk more about that later when I get to the cell-phone images that I took this afternoon.
So, and damn that heavily graffitied car, this is different than the way it was done when I first started photographing this operation only less than a year ago.
It used to be that the locomotive was on the other side of the cut, that the locomotive was on the eastern side.
Apparently, a change was made wherein one of the trackmobile things that the mill has pulls a cut of outbound cars past the switch and just lets the locomotive come and couple to the western side of the cut.
Here it is, the Shuttlewagon.
That is the Sunset Route mainline in the background.
If Union Pacific had a local operation going there, I imagine that the branch from Eunice would no longer exist.
So, here is the train moving back west to the little yard.
Again, this is different than what was done a year ago; a year ago, the locomotive would be shoving the cars westward here instead of pulling them.
Wait, he is shoving to the east now? What is happening here?
I have no idea.
Anyway, you can see the new track arrangement, which I first noticed in June when I came here.
Well, the composition is okay, I guess.
There is a westbound train coming on the mainline!
It may be boring.
Here it is, though.
I guess that that is okay.
Check out that KCS locomotive in the middle of the head-end power consist.
Now what? I am hanging out west of the mill so as to try to get a shot of whatever is happening here with getting a car at some industry over here.
I am imagining how cool this place would have looked 50 years ago with all of the railroad activity here.
So, here comes the AKDN 4106 to pick up this one car.
The car is NTIX 635828, and it appeared to be loaded.
They have coupled to the care.
Let me take a quick picture of this parking area with my tablet computer before leaving to get the shot at the Highway 90 crossing.
Here I am at the Highway 90 crossing, the locomotive shoving this car northward back to the yard.
That’s it. I elected to refrain from chasing the train northward, as the western face of the second car was badly graffitied. I was also tired!
So, that’s all for the DSLR pictures for today, but I did get some cell phone pictures at both the gym and then downtown as I walked around downtown.
So, it is.
So it is.
All of the remaining images are cell-phone images.
So, I went to the gym.
The weights were nice, but the place was blasting the music at obnoxiously loud levels.
I then went walk downtown on North Parkerson, which I think is an interesting street.
Here is the former Missouri Pacific Railroad depot, with its interesting architecture.
It’s really neat, and I wish that something neat could be done with it.
I resumed my walk on North Parkerson, as the temperature was really dropping.
The place has potential with bicycle trails as a walkable city.
These last six images are from East Mill Street, south of the Sunset Route mainline, and I have some questions about this track. I do not know if it was part of the original Missouri Pacific branch from Eunice or if it is remains of the Texas & Pacific Railway branch that arrived from the east via Rayne.
The T&P pulled out of Crowley in about 1947, and I wonder if it is because MP was taking control of T&P at the time and that MP decided that it did not need two branches to Crowley. Even if that is not what happened, it would still make sense for the MP to take over any T&P track in town being abandoned that it thought might be useful for it.
The above view looks west, and the below view looks north toward the Sunset Route mainline, the old Southern Pacific.
This last view looks back east.
Again, I wonder what the story behind this track is. Look at how relatively modern that crossing looks, even though it apparently has been abandoned for a while.
That’s all for the pictures on this whacky day.
I hope that you enjoyed this set!
I was so tired after today’s chase, perhaps due to lack of sleep the night before.
Jim
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JR:
The head on shots reminds me of the head on shots on the Lockport branch years back.