Jimbaux never knew we were living in a world
With a mind that could be so sure
Never knew we were living in a world
With a mind that could be so small
Never knew we were living in a world
And the world is an open court
Maybe we don't wanna live in a world
Where our innocence is so short.
Every Tree Is Good – Except For The Trees In My Way
What Remains, And What Could Have Been
Today, I made some pictures on the Louisiana & Delta Railroad’s Breaux Bridge Branch, including in Breaux Bridge itself, the first time that I get railroad action pictures in Breaux Bridge in, if memory serves me correctly, nearly 15 years, and I also got what I think is a neat shot of the westbound Sunset Limited in a location where I hadn’t photographed any train before.
I guess that the theme of today’s outing and, thus, today’s essay is all of what remains, compared to what was and is no more and compared to what is no more but could still be, but, of course, that is true for plenty of what I photograph and plenty of what I say here. It’s especially true for this outing and this essay, though.
Preliminary Thoughts And News
I have been thinking that we could easily do an Alexandria to Lake Charles passenger train, an out-and-back train with no need for overnight accommodations for crews. If we are going to do that, though, we might as well extend it to Monroe. If we’re going to do that, we might as well have it come from Memphis. Okay, so, maybe all of them can be separate trains.
I hate being fat. I can’t say that I like fasting. I hate it, but I hate being fat.
I really enjoyed my pre-dawn walk today. The temperature was dropping at the time!
I had a meeting today with the leader of the professional association. It was weird. My picture-taking today was oriented around that meeting. I’ll say more about the meeting and the unsettling part about it later.
Trainwatching in Lafayette is just lousy. It just is, particularly now that the Union Pacific Railroad doesn’t run trains here anymore.
However, today, clouds helped with the photography.
I am enjoying the cool darkness.
I totally am going to build my railroad loop around Houston!
I have now done both transferring the 2014 pictures and fixing the filenames of the pictures. That’s all done, finally. I still need to do the sized-down and watermarked versions of them. That’s going to take some time, but not as much time as processing the raw files took
I need to write the November 2003 post tomorrow.
I was thinking last night about how, back in 2014, I would make those zero-day posts with a picture that I took along with a poem. I would like to bring that back now, but circumstances prevent me from doing it. It works only if you do it as frequently as about twice per week. I could still do it if I were back home! Or if I was still in New Orleans.
Lately, I have been on a Silverchair kick, because I was recently cleaning an old desk and found the old greatest hits CD and ripped the contents to my computer, because, somehow, those files didn’t make it in previous computer changes.
“We are the youth; we’ll take your fascism away.” Well, apparently, that wasn’t the case!
Honey-butter chicken biscuits were calling my name this morning. That I answered the call this morning is part of why I can’t seem to get below 180 pounds, but I will be back to fasting tomorrow.
I would love it if there was an L&D CF7 with the grey underbelly delivering those old-school hopper cars, I guess ACF, with big “SOUTHERN PACIFIC” lettering to Abbeville once per week. That would be nice, very nice.
I left the house at 08:47 today, and the weather is wonderful, with temperatures in the 60s and quite cloudy. I love it, because I can actually see things now. That’s really deep, isn’t it?
I had a good brief visit at Girard Park, I ate my Whataburger food at a picnic table while I listened to Talk Louisiana with Mandie Landry as a guest, then walked around the artificial lake, and, after I walked around the lake, I went into the administration building.
I heard two pairs of horns at the park, in succession. The first must have been of a BNSF Railway train, because they seemed to be of the newer variety, but the latter sounded like older horns. My hunch turned out to be correct.
Success In Intuiting
I left the park and then I found a Louisiana & Delta Railroad train at the beginning of the Breaux Bridge Branch entering the branch.
Here is the going-away view, as this job uses two locomotives.
This is the first time that I chase a train eastward on the Breaux Bridge Branch.
Label your streets, Lafayette!!!! I had a hell of a time trying to figure out what streets I was using as I zigzagged eastward trying to get ahead of this train and get to the salt mine before it got there. Also, I got extremely frustrated at the damn Google Map thing, because it draws you a map but, then, it blocks the view of the map that it drew when you try to zoom out to see the whole thing!
Back At The Salt Mine
So, finally, here I am at – or at the road crossing just east of – the salt mine.
The train arrived with one empty boxcar.
The crew would pull three loaded boxcars.
Here is a look to the east, down the branch.
That is a view of what remains. This line had potential. This line could have been a direct route between Lafayette and Baton Rouge that could have passenger and freight on it today.
These two images show the same view, just one having the focus on the train and the other having the focus on the sign.
So, our crew is pulling cars from the salt mine now.
That first car, the blue boxcar, is the empty one with which the train just arrived and which it will spot after it gets the three cars (presumably loaded) that it is pulling from the mine onto the branch mainline.
This is a good view, but all of that graffiti on those classic, endangered boxcars is a damn shame.
I would take pictures of this train much more often were it not for that damned graffiti.
The jerks who do this have really sapped the joy from one of the few activities that I have ever genuinely loved.
I briefly go to the northern side of the track.
Now, it’s time to spot the one inbound car.
This is not a bad view! It’s remarkable that I haven’t done it until now.
Now, the work at the mine for the day is done.
The train becomes a conjoined thing again.
Next is a going-away view. Note the one-number difference in the locomotive numbers.
That’s the siding for the salt mine.
A Steel Facility
Next, we are at O’neal Steel.
This is my first time here!
Kimble erroneously thought that he knew me from something other than my being a railroad enthusiast.
He is the most senior man on L&D now that Peartree has retired.
I am told that the gas place in Breaux Bridge is getting sporadic shipments now.
The train is here to get one empty semi-bulkhead flatcar.
Here they come with the car.
This would be so cool if not for that damned graffiti.
This line didn’t have to be a lonely branch.
This could have been a line shuttling freight traffic and passengers across the Mississippi River.
It is, however, just a dead-end branch with a fairly dismal future.
They are putting the train back together.
Once the salt mine runs out of salt, this line will be very endangered.
The Highlight Back Near The Salt Mine
Next, both back at the salt mine and, then, at Teurlings Drive in Lafayette, are the best pictures from this series.
First, here we are at the salt mine runaround track again, and I had to kill a few small trees to get make these shots possible.
This should be a mainline to Baton Rouge. This line one went to the Mississippi River at Anchorage, and the Southern Pacific railroad interchanged with the Illinois Central Railroad in Baton Rouge via a ferry between Anchorage and Baton Rouge. Indeed, at least until recently, even on the Louisiana & Delta Railroad, which took over this line from the Southern Pacific railroad, the job that served the branch was called the “BR Job” due to this having been the Baton Rouge Branch.
The Great Flood Of 1927 washed away much of the 18-mile bridge across the Atchafalaya Basin, and it was never rebuilt; it should have been rebuilt, higher and stronger, and, perhaps, even double-tracked. Perhaps it should be rebuilt higher and stronger now, though, understandably, that would engender plenty of opposition from local people, especially in Breaux Bridge and the communities east of it, though getting passenger trains in their towns could sweeten the deal.
The BNSF Railway and the Canadian National Railway would have a much more sensible connection than the convoluted one that exists between the two in the New Orleans Gateway, and being able to interchange in Baton Rouge would eliminate the need for any interchange between them in the New Orleans Gateway.
We could be running all sorts of passenger trains between Lafayette and Baton Rouge, like even a commuter train that would start at New Iberia or, even, Jeanerette that would turn at Lafayette to go to Baton Rouge, with a few stops between Lafayette and Baton Rouge, and we could run a daily-in-both-directions pair of passenger trains east on the Lafayette Subdivision between Lafayette and New Orleans with the capacity that would be made available by moving the CN interchange traffic off of the line.
That is what could have been and what, with enough effort, could still be.
This, however, is what remains.
It’s pretty cool, and I love the jointed rail, but this line should be so very much more than a branch with such little tonnage moving on it.
Here is the going-away view of it.
It’s still neat, as it is, of course.
Next, for our final stand with this train, we are at Teurlings Drive.
I really love this shot!
It has very much a neat branchline feel – one that, as I have noted, I think that it should not have.
Here today, I finally got the shot of which I was deprived the first time that I photographed a train on this line nearly 15 years ago.
That’s all for the Breaux Bridge Branch today.
Lafayette Yard
Here are some limestone slurry tank cars in BNSF Railway Lafayette Yard.
I think that those go to and-or come from the Norfolk Southern Railway in New Orleans.
That’s all for the yard for today. BNSF 1681 and BNSF 1762, SD40-2s, I guess, are switch power. There is so much concrete on the southern side of the track, and it’s a damn shame that it’s not moving here by rail. There were a whole bunch of boring cars in the yard, lease hopper cars and tank cars, some with graffiti.
Oh, look, it’s a Heritage 2 Pumpkin! I almost like those things now!
Okay, whatever, I am leaving.
Downtown
I went to the downtown government-center place.
I then went to get coffee at the Rêve place downtown.
This coffee shop experience was okay.
A dude talked to me about the economy, but then he talked about buying gold and silver. So, that was weird.
That’s all.
Amtrak Illuminated By Clouds
Earlier, just before I got to Teurlings Drive for those last shots of the L&D train, Amtrak Julie told me that the #1 would be in New Iberia at 13:12, which made me think that it would be too late for me to catch it prior to my 14:00 meeting.
Fortunately, this turned out to be not true. At 13:25, I saw the headlight.
This is a new shot, at East Kaliste Saloom Road, and I really like it.
I had never photographed a train here prior to today, but I think that this is great.
The clouds really make the shot.
Ableism And Trauma At The Business Meeting
So, the meeting went “okay,” except in a way that reveals that the whole thing, like everything for a neurodivergent person living in a society hostile to our way of being, could very much go not okay at all.
I got to the building where the meeting was 21 minutes early, a little bit less than 10 minutes after I left the East Kaliste Saloom Road. So, that’s good, I guess.
She talked really loudly. It was painful. I sat four – maybe just three – feet from her, and she was talking to me as if I were 50 feet away, even though we were alone in large, quiet room.
I had to compromise my principles, not just with myself but validating how she treated other people. I sold out other people. I could have spoken up, and speaking up could have discouraged her from doing this to other people, but speaking up also could have meant that I would have been less likely to get from her what I needed from her.
These are the daily compromises that we must make. This is what remains.
It kills me inside. It really does.
I worry that something like this will happen again when I meet the guild people to whom she is referring me.
In some ways, it felt like a waste of time.
Coffee With Derail
So, in better news, today, I finally got to meet someone who has followed my work for years!
It was a great visit!
When you’re on that railroad and go work in a new territory, you need two qualifying runs before you are turned loose to work as if you’ve been there for a long time.
We talked about how decrepit the SP was when the BNSF took over. He talked about Philip Anschutz doing asset stripping. PSR is just a different iteration of that.
BNSF used to do interchange with Acadiana including stuff to go to Opelousas, but, apparently, that has stopped. I suggested that this might be in part due to Positive Train Control, that the Acadiana Railway has no PTC-compliant locomotives, which means that it can’t run its own trains between Eunice and Opelousas.
Southpark
I checked out Southpark.
The restaurant across from here Southpark, I think, looks like it was the Burger King where we stopped when we went to Ice Gators games in school. I wish that I could have seen and photographed the trains here then!
New Iberia
So, like a crazy person, I went to New Iberia.
I noticed the Cade water tower. I don’t remember ever seeing it before.
On 106.3 FM, I heard for the second time today that Fall Out Boy version of “We Didn’t Start The Fire”; between that and the Tonic “if you could only see” song playing after that, it made me feel old, as though life has passed me by.
At the New Iberia interchange yard, there are plenty of cars — tank cars, carbon black hopper cars, a few BNSF hopper cars, a couple of graffitied boxcars.
Plenty of houses around here have seen better days; we could really fix this up, man!
I get close to the depot, and I see this.
LDRR 1707 and a long string of tank cars are arriving from the east, presumably, Jeanerette, and I think that the cars were then shoved down the Midland Branch south of Admiral Doyle Drive for the night.
LDRR 3529 is at the depot.
In the runaround track are three carbon black hopper cars and one flatcar with panel track on it
Driving in, thinking about Px and Amelia and how I have another connection here, feeling weird about it.
I want to feel the security of home.
I don’t want to look at CF7s being scrapped.
The LDRR 1710, not a CF7, is getting scrapped.
So, I went to Popeyes by the track to eat, foregoing a trip to Raising Cane’s. There were some cute young black women working the counter. The food took a while, and a train came. So, I ran outside across the highway to grab this shot with zero time to spare.
I didn’t think that it was presentable until I processed it.
The food wasn’t that great.
I should have gone to Raising Cane’s instead.
I do not need to eat at Popeyes again for a while. The last time that I ate at a Popeye’s was in early February when I got the Port Rail train.
I probably should have eaten a salad at the house, but, not only did I not do that, I also stopped at Dairy Queen to get a Blizzard. I guess that I felt that I deserved it after getting these pictures today, which is not an uncommon feeling. I have this urge to gorge after getting good shots, which may be due to a hunting instinct and that hunting and catching trains serves the psychological need for me that hunting and catching animals – something that I don’t do – serves for people who do that.
Anyway, three honey-butter-chicken biscuits and a taquito, then only a little bit of fruity trail mix until I ate at Popeye’s right after that last SLR-camera picture, and then DQ food are all that I ate today.
That’s all for the pictures for the day.
I focus on what remains, while there is so much new that deserves and needs attention.
Epilogue, Including Thoughts On Ableist Oppression
What’s the difference between “germane” and “relevant”?
Halloween is terrible, but I now have some shots from October 30, even though I have none from one year ago today, five years ago today, 10 years ago today, 12 years ago today, 15 years ago today, and, for all that I know, 20 years ago today.
It’s now my purpose in life to share these, since, being an autistic person living in a society hostile to autism, I seem to be being denied the normal way that people find meaning in their lives.
This has been a good day. I got a good half hour walk in the hood this morning, then walked around Girard Park, and I am looking forward to walking in the hood tomorrow morning.
Of course, today, there was the conspicuous absence of any Union Pacific Railroad activity in my view.
I need to talk to Janet about what to do about the ‘rents.
I went foaming today, and it was kind of like a job, like I was getting paid to do it, because, essentially, I was, even though revenue doesn’t come remotely close to covering expenses.
In some ways, it gives a false legitimacy to what I am doing. It shouldn’t.
It would be neat if Earl’s Furniture got boxcars full of furniture.
As I was driving back to the house in the darkness, I just figured out something. I say that I am not oppositional by nature, that I am oppositional due to the oppositional way that society treats me, but I have realized something to bolster that case.
I’m not oppositional by nature. I’m not oppositional due to being autistic. My being autistic is not the cause of my being opposition.
I am oppositional due to how the anti-autistic society treats me, because it is society that is oppositional, but it’s difficult for people to believe that about something that is a neurotype, something that might itself intrinsically about psychology, nerves, and behavior; however, the same cannot be said about immunocompromised people and people with dietary restrictions!
The immunocompromised people aren’t being oppositional because their medical conditional makes them oppositional. They are behaving oppositionally because society is oppositional to them! The same is true for angry black people! The same is true for me!
I had to compromise my principles today. I worry that that will happen again whenever I meet this group of people, this guild, to whom she is referring me.
With all of this in mind, as I drove by the gym and thought about the connection between the mean boss lady there and the boss lady from the business meeting today, I thought about the immunocompromised people who have figured out how much society hates them.
This is what remains of me.
That’s all for now.
Jbx
