‘Twas The Day After Christmas – 26 December 2003

This set of images was made on Friday 26 December 2003, after a Christmas that was preceded by a memorable chase of the Lockport Branch train that took place a day after a day of railroad photography done in the expectation that the Lockport Branch would be served on that day.

All images made in this post were made in Terrebonne Parish.  The first photograph is not until the late afternoon, but, apparently, I spent much of the day trackside and will report those sightings here.  I may have taken pictures of these trains of which I will not show pictures here, but please remember that this entire series is of scanned slide film that was scanned prior to the spring of 2014.

At 09:53 at Chacahoula, I saw (and, perhaps, photographed) a westbound Union Pacific Railroad manifest train with the following power:
UP 9695 – C44-9W
DRGW 5368 – Tunnel Motor, SP speed lettering

This is the train that The Mathews Foamer saw the previous day at Avondale. It had more than 30 carbon black hopper cars.  This was the QAVWC-26 – “AV” being Avondale, Louisiana, and “WC” being West Colton, California.

At 13:17 at Thoroughbred Park, at around milepost 52, between Schriever and the Lafourche Crossing, I saw (and, perhaps, photographed) Amtrak’s westbound Sunset Limited with the lead locomotive being AMTK 137.

At 14:15 at Melodia Plantation, at milepost 49.6, I saw (and, perhaps, photographed) BNSF Railway train H-LALCSX with 294 axles and the following power:
FURX 7935 – H1
BN?? SD40-2, Green
BNSF ? C44-9W

The H-LALCSX had taken the siding in Schriever for the westbound Sunset Limited, which was delayed.

At 16:11, UP train IATCI – Intermodal, Atlanta, Georgia, to City Of Industry, California – westbound was at Schriever with five Tropicana refrigerator cars and the following locomotives:
UP 4895 – SD70M – flag, flare
UP 4961 – SD70M – flag, flare

I am pasting my notes from that time.  Two decades later, as I compose and publish this post, the practice of listing locomotive numbers seems only mildly bizarre, but the practice of including notes like “flag, flare” seems very bizarre!

It’s amazing how our interests, priorities, and standards change over time.  I am keeping the weirdness of listing locomotives here, something that I don’t normally do in my contemporary postings, as a way of conveying the feel of the time in which these images were made.

Anyway, the IATCI had to line a switch at Schriever (my notes say that it’s the east switch, but I am not sure about that), which allowed me time to get to Chacahoula to make this image at 16:33.

That’s cool.  Later on at Schriever, the UP local train, the LLS51, led by SP 7133, was in the siding for two trains.

The first was the eastbound Sunset Limited at 18:35, only 43 minutes late!  It had AMTK 93 and AMTK 97 as power.

The second train was BNSF Railway train H-GATNWO at 19:10 with the following power (yes, I am doing it again, only because I did it in 2003):
BNSF 5230 – C44-9W
NS 9409 (could have been 9404)
FURX 8115 – H1 (second one today!)

After going to the pub to have a couple of pints of Guinness, I returned to witness the following at around 20:00.

This was BNSF Railway train H-NWOBEL, stopping to make a 16-car pickup.

The first five cars of the train were CSX/NYC coil cars.

The 16-car pickup that it was making here at Schriever included the nine cars that the Louisiana & Delta Railroad Schriever job brought back from Morgan City on Saturday.

The LLS51 cleared up at Ursa for the NWOBEL.

That is all for today.   There would be an exciting chase the next day!

Stay tuned.

Merci.

Jim