Greetings, and welcome to the August 2006 Sampler essay. Following travel in June and then July of that summer, I was, in August, fully back in southeastern Louisiana and would not leave the state again until after Christmas.
I didn’t take out the camera until almost a week into the month.
Monday, The 7th
On this date, working in a non-teaching job with no real time off except weekends and a few holidays, I was back home in Bayouland for a dentist appointment and ventured southward to the Lockport Branch to check out the train there.
Here he is, the LDRR 1851 still in the Mountain Laurel paint scheme, pulling four loaded boxcars for Valentine Paper in the sugarcane as seen from McCloud Road.
I then chased it as far as Myrtle Drive before having to break off to go to my dentist appointment.
Valentine Paper was a paper-finishing plant that dealt only in recycled paper. There were no chips or pulpwood that came there. The primary rail traffic was boxcar loads of rejected paper from mills from across the continent.
Later, after my dentist appointment, I saw the westbound Amtrak Sunset Limited at Schriever with the private car Hialeah on the rear.
Sunday, The 20th
Here is a scene from Mid-City along City Park Avenue.
That place is special to me, but I didn’t really fit in there. Then again, I mostly don’t fit in anywhere.
Later that evening, I photographed a BNSF Railway train passing South Carrollton Avenue westbound on the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad.
Monday, The 21st
Here I was watching the Eddie Izzard DVD on my computer in my apartment.
I guess that Saint Jude was over there that night.
Tuesday, The 22nd
On this date, I was, I guess because I was working in the area, on the southern end of Norfolk Southern Railway’s Oliver Yard, and I stopped to photograph a switch job working, which included some Airslide hopper cars, including one with the Missouri Pacific Railroad buzzsaw logo!
I didn’t hang out much there over the years, even though it is a place that many in the general public experience trains.
Saturday, The 26th
This was a weekend of action on the New Orleans & Gulf Coast Railway.
On this date, I photographed a 15-car NOGC train coming from Belle Chasse to Gouldsboro Yard on Madison Street at 17:24 CDT. This was not a grain train, and this is the latest that I had ever seen NOGC action on a Saturday.
Then, the locomotives ran around the train, I don’t remember if they did any work in the yard, and, then, I shot them coming out onto the Gouldsboro Subdivision.
They would stop at Huey P. Long Avenue so that the driver of a tow truck parked a little bit too close to the track could resituate itself so that the train could safely pass.
Sunday, The 27th
This was one of the strangest foaming days of my life, because there were two completely unrelated oddities happening on this date, and I managed to get both of them due to each being within a two-hour drive of each other.
The first was a loaded New Orleans & Gulf Coast Railway grain train, the first time that I ever saw NOGC action on a Sunday, and the second was the Louisiana Steam Train Association’s train of passenger cars returning via the Kansas City Southern Railway to its home in Jefferson Parish, albeit without its steam locomotive, the SP 745, which had problems and had to be left for a while at Page, Oklahoma.
Before heading towards Baton Rouge to intercept the LASTA train on the KCS, I ventured to Gouldsboro Yard just in case I’d happen to get lucky on a Sunday. For the first time ever, I saw action on the NOGC on a Sunday, and it was indeed a grain train, one that apparently slipped by me before I was brunching at the Common Grounds Café in Gretna on 4th Street.
At 12:55 CDT, NOGC 504, NOGC 1036, and NOLR 2180 were at the front of the grain train that was halfway out of Gouldsboro Yard on Madison Street, stopped to get the second half tacked on the rear of the first cut.
This was back in the days – but near the end of the days – when the inbound road power of NOGC trains stayed on the train until they got to Gouldsboro Yard, a practice that would soon stop apparently because horns on the locomotives got stolen when they were in Gouldsboro Yard. Three big Union Pacific Railroad AC locomotives were in the yard, one of them a patched Southern Pacific railroad unit.
At 13:07, I got him rounding the curve at Mel Ott Park in Gretna.
At 13:53, I got him again at Thirtieth Street in Belle Chase. I could hear the engines rumbling 10 minutes before I saw the train; it reminded me of Rich Mountain!
At 14:02, the train arrived in Belle Chase yard, and it appeared to stop and tie down. The locomotives broke off of the train. I have no idea how long it was stopped since I decided it was time to abandon this adventure and haul tail to catch up with the LASTA train.
I found it – KCS train S-KCNO – south (east) of Baton Rouge with GWWR 4096 in the lead.
I caught it at 15:38 in Gonzales, at 16:02 in Gramercy, at 16:35 on the Bonnet Carré Spillway, at 16:59 when it arrived Kenner to a big greeting with a band and television cameras at Williams Boulevard, at 17:28 as it left Kenner, and at 18:19 as it arrived at the KCS yard in Metairie.
Here is a picture from the train’s time stopped at Williams Boulevard in Kenner.
It was at Kenner on this afternoon while photographing this event that my camera passed the 10,000-picture mark, which is 10,000 pictures in a little bit more than a year since getting the camera.
When the train went onto Canadian National Railway trackage, I heard some rather amusing comments from Mays Tower:
– “That don’t sound like no steam whistle.”
– “That’s a funny lookin’ steam engine.”
We noticed an M-NOSH (Manifest – New Orleans to Shreveport) at New Orleans Yard with an impressive power consist:
TFM 1626 – SD70MAC
TFM 1660 – SD70MAC
TFM 1671 – SD70MAC
TFM 1656 – SD70MAC
GWWR 2036 – GP38ish – Bumblebee
I saw and photographed the 2036 at Sibley on the local train that comes east out of Shreveport back in June.
‘Twas a great day!
Tuesday, The 29th
This was the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and my goal here was to get some night shots of New Orleans railroading on this somber date.
Those are some NOGC locomotives parked at Gouldsboro Yard.
Wednesday, The 30th
I was back at the KCS yard on this date, and I saw GMDX 73 and TFM 2643 along with KCS 4767 in the western part of the yard.
At the eastern end of the yard, I got pictures of the yard tower and the warehouses.
These structures had been unoccupied since being damaged by Katrina the year before, and they were razed in 2010.
Thursday, The 31st
On this date, I visited for the first time what would a month later become my plush Mid-City apartment until April 2010.
While I was in the neighborhood, I got this shot.
I then returned to Gouldsboro Yard to get more night shots, and I got pictures of parked locomotives UP 8333, UP 7238, and UP 6471 for another grain train, not the same one that I photographed a few days earlier.
It was the beginning of the first school year after I graduated from college that I was not working as a teacher, and I would work in the construction industry for the next year before returning to the teaching job that I left after the 2005-2006 school year due losing my position due to the student population decreasing due to Katrina.
This construction-management job was a great experience, and, after I left it, I had the three best years of my teaching career.
Stay tuned for September 2006 pictures.
Jim
