Greetings, and welcome to the May 2006 Sampler essay. As with April 2006 and late March 2006 before it, May of 2006 was my first spring in Whoadieville, though quite different than I had imagined that it would be before Hurricane Katrina forever changed our lives the year before.
As these sampler essays usually do, this essay features images from southeastern Louisiana, though this one also includes images from a trip to coastal Mississippi and Alabama.
Saturday, The 6th
On this date, I decided to take a trip southward in Plaquemines Parish on the western bank of the Mississippi River, an area that got heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
It’s just a very vulnerable area that is dying due to subsidence due to the leveeing of the Mississippi River.
Sunday, The 7th
My weekend morning foaming in these days usually consisted of hanging out at CTC Live Oak Junction.
That is Union Pacific Railroad train QLIHL-06 moving eastbound on the former Texas & Pacific Railway mainline.
Thursday, The 11th
Wow! It’s amazing how much energy that I had back then, or how much I cared about old-style railroad equipment. On this day, I drove like 100 miles in one direction after work in the afternoon just to chase this train with a Conrail Blue locomotive leading the train.
This is a westbound Union Pacific Railroad train led by NS 8362 crossing Lake Palourde Bypass Road.
Friday, The 12th
I remember how cool I felt having friends, especially friends from a cool job, back then.
That’s moonrise over the Westbank Expressway as seen from G’s house in Marrero.
Saturday, The 13th
I spent this weekend with FEMA Boy in Coastal Mississippi and Coastal Alabama.
That image is of activity at the CSX yard in Mobile, Alabama.
Sunday, The 14th
We went visit McDuffie Island in Mobile on this morning, where we saw a coal or coke train.
On the way home, I think after FEMA Boy and I departed ways, I photographed boys playing on a closed beach in Biloxi, Mississippi.
It was an interesting experience, but, with the Katrina damage, it was depressing, too.
Monday, The 15th
I got some shots of a train on the New Orleans & Gulf Coast Railway this afternoon, but what I am sharing here is an image of an odd sighting on the NOGC.
As far as I know, even back then, there was no customer on the NOGC that got coil cars, even irregularly. So, the presence of this car here either was a mistake, it was bound for one of the pipe yards that NOGC still served at the time, or it was a special order for an irregular customer to be unloaded at this spot.
Tuesday, The 16th
Here the next day is an NOGC train, with a couple of EMD GP7s as power, leading a train along Fourth Street in Gretna, on the former Southern Pacific railroad mainline.
In the 20 years since this image was made, trains in general are not nearly as interesting as they once were, but, for me, one thing that is still just as cool is this NOGC street running, which I still photograph now even as I don’t photograph trains much anymore.
Wednesday, The 17th
On this morning, back when I was still an active school teacher, I left work during my planning period when many of us saw smoke to the northeast. Mrs Alice Touchet seemed to think that the Gretna courthouse was on fire, but it seemed to me that the smoke was coming from across the river in New Orleans.
I proceeded to the Riverwalk of Gretna where I joined a few dozen onlookers who were gazing across the river at the spectacle before us. It seemed that an old wharf had went ablaze, and two boats and two helicopters were trying to put it out. Fortunately, Mrs Alice’s hunch that the courthouse was on fire was wrong. I don’t know how the fire started. I remember that Hiawatha Niagara also left school to check out the action. As I recall, it was very windy that day.
I do miss my time working in that area, and photos like these are a way of preserving my good memories of the place. If you ever have some time to spare, it’s worthy of a visit.
I would photograph an NOGC train on 4th Street that same afternoon.
Thursday, The 18th
Here is a view that I wish that I would have photographed more when I had the opportunity to do so, except maybe that I didn’t have that much opportunity to do this.
The view is of a couple of NOGC locomotives switching Gouldsboro Yard by working the downriver throat of the yard, which is how flat switching in the yard is done. The problem is that this happens only at certain times of day and that the sun illuminates this area only in the late afternoon near the summer solstice.
The other problem now is that there is a building blocking this view.
Friday, The 19th
This was a pretty cool train, or a pretty cool power set, with a Warbonnet and two Canadian National Railway locomotives on BNSF Railway train M-LALNWO1-19 moving eastbound past Thibodaux Junction just after making a setout at Schriever.
It’s my classic sugarcane-field broadside shot, and it works here only because we are very late in the afternoon and close to the winter solstice. I recall some social activity that I did after doing this shot, but I can’t remember details.
Saturday, The 20th
Back in those days, the Louisiana & Delta Railroad would move tonnage bound for interchange with the Union Pacific Railroad eastbound a few days per week, and nearly all of this was loaded carbon-black hopper cars from either of the three carbon-black plants in Saint Mary Parish, though these runs occasionally included some rice from the rice mill in Abbeville, which closed in 2020. The Union Pacific local train, which ran no farther west than Berwick at the time, would pick up this cut of cars somewhere between Berwick and Raceland inclusive.
During the week, these runs were usually handled by the Schriever Job, which served no customers west of Morgan City and, so, would run light power from at least Morgan City (if not Schriever itself) to New Iberia to grab the eastbound tonnage. Actually, this process may have started after the closure of the Supreme Sugar refinery and the subsequent closure of the Supreme Branch as a way of giving the Schriever Job something to do on the days of the week that it didn’t need to go to Raceland.
The Schriever Job typically had Saturdays off during this time, though. So, if a Saturday run was needed, a job out of New Iberia would bring the cars to Schriever, which was an opportunity to see L&D locomotives that normally weren’t assigned to Schriever, which is what happened on this morning as we see LDRR 2000 and LDRR 1505, still in its Allegheny & Eastern railroad paint scheme, bringing carbon-black loads for interchange with the Union Pacific Railroad eastbound at Brule Guillot Road in Chacahoula, a shot that I rarely did even back then.
I would later get shots of the train entering the siding in Schriever. The two locomotives would then return to New Iberia with no cars.
Sunday, The 21st
I liked these blue CEFX standard-cab locomotives, and this train had some cool cars near the front of it. So, I chased this train all the way to Bayou Sale. This picture shows it coming through Berwick.
It’s a Union Pacific Railroad train, but I don’t know which train it is. I think that a trace at the time showed it as a QNOAX, but that doesn’t seem right.
Saturday, The 27th
We will end this set with an eastbound BNSF Railway train, apparently, a loaded fly-ash train, crossing North Main Project Road in Schriever.
That’s all. I had just a few days left at a teaching job that I had just learned that I would lose due to a dramatic drop in student enrollment due to Hurricane Katrina. I would return to that same job a year later and have the best three years of my life.
What would I do in the meantime? Stay tuned to these sampler essays to find out, because it actually does get interesting!
Merci.
Jim
