Photography and random writings from some crazy Cajun with a camera!

Jimbaux says, “Don’t ask me; I don’t know.” What, no non-railroad-related and non-photography-related comments on the previous article, with the new views and all of the “views” discussed after the views? Railroad Pictures Damn, It’s Hot Fall showed no sign of approaching today, as the heat and, especially, the humidity were quite oppressive.  Before I […]

Jimbaux knows that today is not the past and that he doesn’t need to relive it. Not That Much This brief article of pictures that I took today – Wednesday 3 September 2014 – will likely not be pleasing to those of you who come here for good photography, but it might be okay for […]

Jimbaux is on that painkiller, painkiller, painkiller. Yes, I’m Alive, But Not Necessarily Well Friday Frontin’ Hi.  This is the first post of new pictures on the blog since early May.  I hope that you enjoyed the 2004 Mexico series; I put plenty of effort into it, and I’m glad that it is all done!  […]

Goodbye, Monterrey It was time to go home.  A life-changing, mind-stretching, formative experience was now coming to an end.  It was an emotional day, as I would leave one world and re-enter another world, forever changed by my experience of being away from it. Saturday 17 July 2004 started just as the previous day ended: […]

[Jimbaux is alive, for you, awake.] On Thursday 15 July 2004, one day after the Ray of Beast and I visited El Obispado and I photographed some interesting TFM action at Salinas-Victoria, my Mexican-Canadian friend Joel and I visited what is perhaps the most spectacular natural wonder in the Monterrey area. These pictures are shown […]

This is the story of my afternoon adventure photographing TFM trains (Transportación Ferroviaria Mexicana was a Mexican railroad created in the mid-1990s when the Mexican railroad system was privatized, it was 49%-owned by the Kansas City Southern Railway, and it became the KCSdeMexico in 2005 when KCS acquired it in full) north of Monterrey and […]

[Jimbaux is craving everything that he thought was alive.] Determined, after an emotional weekend of telling my roommate goodbye and giving a railroad slide show to local railroad enthusiasts and of introspection partially prompted by passing an American holiday outside of the country, to get some railroad action pictures in the limited time that I […]

[Jimbaux listens to the rail falling day by day by day.] Apparently, I took no pictures at all in the two week period between the second day of the Zacatecas trip on Saturday 19 June 2004 and the day that I had to say goodbye to my great roommate on Saturday 3 July 2004, the […]

[Jimbaux is alive, for you, awake.] Two weeks after arriving at ITESM, a weekend trip to the historic mining and mountain city of Zacatecas, organized by the university’s international student program, approached.  You have seen so far that we had done some day trips or afternoon trips, like a visit to Parque Chipinque, a visit […]

[Jimbaux drags you through his wasted life; are you forever dead?] On Saturday 12 June 2004, I made two trips out to the mountainous and desert area west of Monterrey, the first with a group and the latter on my own, during which I got my first real train action pictures in Mexico. The Roommate […]

[Jimbaux was finding a way to be.] After class on Wednesday 9 June 2004, or miercoles 9 junio 2004, some of us took an ITESM-organized trip from campus to MARCO – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo – downtown.  Modern art is by its nature usually is unintelligible to many of those who attempt to imbibe it, […]

[Jimbaux enjoyed a prelude of good regiomontano things.] Meet my host family!  On only my third night in Monterrey, while beginning my brief studies as a student at ITESM, I attended the graduation ceremony – at the same academic institution where I was studying – of my host mother Señora Gloria.  Like many even middle-class […]

[Jimbaux was running blind on 31 May 2004.] Here it is!  This is the first post of the two-month-long series of pictures from my 2004 experience at and going to and from Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey and all of the ancillary things I did while in the Monterrey area.  I had […]

Jimbaux must have been . . . high . . . he must have been . . . so . . high. Getting High Is Not Necessarily Reckless Hello.  How are you doing?  Here are some pictures that I took today at different times during the course of the day in New Orleans, probably my […]

Jimbaux is reminded that overthinking, overanalyzing separates the body from the mind. Yin And Yang Today – Monday 21 April 2014 – was a mixed day in many ways.  Both despite and because of a good Easter weekend and the changing of seasons, I was agitated and cranky today, not running on full cylinders both […]

Jimbaux wants you to say you will, say you won’t, make up your mind tonight. A Difference of A Decade Is A Difference of Place, Habit, Priority, Identity, and Perspective This morning, 10 years to the day after I shot a pair of westbound trains at Thibodaux Junction back home in bayouland and five years […]

Jimbaux is back in the saddle again. A Day To Be Remembered Wow, what a day today!  This will be day long remembered.  (The Mid-City Marine would probably tell me that it is not wise to say “this will be a day long remembered” for the same reason that it is not wise to say […]

These pictures – more scanned 35mm color slides – are not among my best, but they show the westward view from the no-longer-publicly-accessible Thibodaux Junction location that I have recently shown. On the morning of Saturday 03 April 2004, I got to the track in Schriever (mp 55, Lafayette Subdivision) at around 07:30 and saw […]

Jimbaux loves those Mid-City, Mid-City nights. Usually, the NS Bernadotte Line – an urban railroad branchline in the Mid-City neighborhood of New Orleans – is served sometime between midnight and dawn (and usually on Mondays.)  On the evening of Sunday 29 March 2009, the line was served a few hours before midnight, and I took […]

[There Jimbaux goes, on the road again.] All Along The Lonesome Highway . . . The Mathews Foamer’s father died in a car accident in late March 2009.  On the afternoon of Sunday 22 March 2009, one day after I photographed Union Pacific train QLISNL at Elysian Fields Avenue, I left New Orleans to spend […]

Jimbaux gets by with a little help from his friends. Friends, by definition, are a valuable part of one’s life, and on the last day of February 2009, I got to spend time in New Orleans with a friend near whom I had intended to live.  The Mid-City Marine and his wife JMS were displaced […]

Day 4 of our Close Up 2009 week was Independent Study day.  It was a Thursday, and the length of the program had been reduced by one day from years past.  Capitol Hill Day, which we had wonderfully experienced the day before, had historically been on the Thursday with Independent Study day on Friday and […]

The bloodiest day in US history took place on 17 September 1862 near the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland, at a creek called Antietam. On Tuesday 10 February 2009, five days after I had witnessed what I knew to be the second-to-last train on the former Southern Pacific Railway branchline down Bayou Lafourche and the last […]

Greetings, and welcome to Jimbaux’s Journal, be thee friend or foe; for those who missed many of the January offerings, a check of the January 2014 archives will reveal some interesting posts. Hello Yes, kiddies, this is my first Sunday Sermon in a long time, the last being nearly 10 months ago.  The long-term forecast […]

Jimbaux wants you to let him live his life alone, or maybe not? No If you are here only for my high-speed rail initiation proposal, scroll down until after the last picture to find that essay. Welcome To 2014, Good Netizens Many of you have already seen a sampling of my southern Mississippi work from […]

Same Old, Same Old Hi.  Here are a few repetitive pictures taken on Saturday 17 January 2009. This is Norfolk Southern Railway train 393 slowing to a stop for a crew change at Bayou St. John in New Orleans. These pictures were taken in front of the LSU Dental School on the NS Back Belt. […]

Jimbaux knows that this house is not a home. These 21 pictures – nearly all of which were taken of locations heretofore not seen here on Jimbaux’s Journal – were taken on Sunday 4 January 2009, two years to the day after a very memorable day in western Nuevo León. Something Different Hello.  A cousin’s […]

[Jimbaux knows that the highway song is as lonely as the road he’s on.] Now For Something Very Different On Monday 29 December 2008, I traveled to a part of the southern part of my home state to which I had until then never visited, and my goal was to visit an obscure railroad line, […]

[Jimbaux wishes you comfort and joy.] Happy Christmas, people.  On Wednesday 24 December 2008, I got a few pictures at Chacahoula, one of a train and three of a sugarcane fire.  First, here is the train, Amtrak’s westbound Sunset Limited, which I have photographed here many times. Also, one year to the day prior, I […]

[Jimbaux would like for you to do as he did and experience the warmth before you go.] The Essence, The Genesis, The Soul Tuesday 23 December 2003 was one of the most memorable days of my photographic and railroad enthusiast life; back then, I was still shooting on this ancient medium known as film, and […]

[Jimbaux is playing another game of putting things aside, as if we’ll come back to them sometime.] Hey!  How are you doing?  Let me know. This is the first posting of new material in a long time, the last time being in September when I published some June and July leftovers; everything else that I have published lately […]

My pal BobE arrived in New Orleans via air on the evening of Friday 5 December 2008 in advance of a work-related conference the next week, just as he had done the same weekend the year before when we met up so that he could see what action KCS had to offer in the New […]

[Jimbaux was spending his time waiting for the one . . . or the four . . . or the five.] Another 2008 Thanksgiving Week Day on the Mudbug Sub We are back where we were yesterday, with local trains and such on the Lafayette Subdivision, and, yes, we have more from Death Magnetic. 4 […]

Where were you when the 45-year anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination took place?  If you are like Jimbaux (and pity to you if you are), you were foaming, and that’s what we see here in these pictures taken on Saturday 22 November 2008, my first train pictures in almost a month, the previous being the […]

Classic New Orleans Railroading Today’s visual trip to the past takes us to the Norfolk Southern Railway’s “Bernadotte Line” that diverges from NS’s “Back Belt” line across New Orleans at a place called East City Junction.  The Bernadotte Line, under NS successor Southern Railway, once had a roundhouse at Scott Street in Mid-City and went […]

You saw an NOPB passenger special on the first day of Steam Fest III yesterday, and now you actually see the SP 745 – actually see steam – here on day two of the festival, Sunday 5 October 2008.  First, on the way to the festivities, we see some streetcar action on St. Charles Avenue. […]

[Jimbaux wants all of your hopes to turn to wishes, and all of your wishes come true.] These pictures were taken in June and July, but this post is being typed in late September; so, the pictures represent the time two and three months before the mood reflected in the writing does.  We are now […]

And The Only Pictures Taken Were Taken In The State In Between After my epic last full day in Memphis the night before, when we saw the Lorraine Motel, the FEMA-Amtrak train to New Orleans to bring the Gustav evacuees home, many MATA trolleys, a few Norfolk Southern trains,  and Central Station and the sinkhole, […]

Day 2 of my Memphis Hurrication Gustav started with my friend HAFMO at work, me out on my own taking pictures, the remnants of the hurricane from which I escaped catching up with me, and a train that normally passes through New Orleans detouring through Memphis because of the storm.  Last time, we got some […]

[Jimbaux is wondering if you are wondering where do we go now?] Or, The Beginning of My Out-Of-State Gustav Hurrication For the second consecutive post, the headline might be confusing to some.  A full reading of this piece should explain it, and subsequent posts should remove all doubt. Where Were We? Last time, you saw […]

Hurricane Gustav was approaching southeastern Louisiana on 28 August 2008 when I took these few train pictures in New Orleans before train movements stopped because the floodgates that cross the tracks were closed.  Hurricane Gustav was a big deal for me and for folks back in the homeland – Cajunland – southwest of New Orleans, […]

The Mid-City Marine and his wife JMS were in town at the beginning of August 2012, and my woadie and I got together for an entire Sunday, beginning the day with a Sunday Sermon of yet-to-be published photographs (but that may be published by the time some of you are reading this), then a trip […]

[Jimbaux can’t pass up this opportunity to make himself absurd . . . ] Or, The Consolation Prize? The Northtown To Grand Forks Manifest The real kicker about today’s story is the great opportunity that I gave up by going on this chase and taking these pictures, and today’s song is very appropriate on many […]

[Jimbaux is deprived of his conscience . . . ] Okay, so, it was Independence Day, and TI and Zzannie had us over to their house in West Fargo for a celebration.  So, that’s where our pictures are.  Before we get to the train pictures, here’s your correspondent pouring caramel on some ice cream in […]

[Jimbaux knows that when you’re on the edge and falling off, it’s all over for you.] On the evening of Friday 29 June 2008 in North Dakota, Jimbaux photographed his first moving Canadian Pacific Railway train, making at least one train of all of the “Big 8” railroads of North America his photographic subjects, the […]

This is Day 4 of Jimbaux’s five-day outbound trip of his Great Northward Pilgrimage of the summer of 2008.  Just like with Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3, most of what is written below was written in North Dakota a few weeks after the pictures were taken, and, as stated before, photo essays like […]

[Jimbaux knows that it’s not too late, it’s never too late.] Yes, “Never Too Late” – a brilliant song indeed – and the rest of the Three Days Grace album One-X was new at the time of the Great Northward Pilgrimage of the summer of 2008, and it played plenty in my truck on that […]

So, yes, the UP 1983 – the Western Pacific heritage unit (the “heritage” fleet came about a decade ago when UP honored several of its predecessor railroads by painting one locomotive in each of the selected predecessor’s paint scheme, well, actually, an new paint scheme to honor the old paint schemes) – made its way […]

[Jimbaux is expecting just a little bit too much from the wounded, but he sees, sees through it all, sees through, sees you.] Yeah, so, as you saw yesterday, I was in Monroe along the KCS’s Meridian Speedway the first weekend of June 2008 for the KCSHS convention.  The Stroe Man and I foamed together […]