I came across a slow moving coal train heading north on the old Illinois Central mainline out of New Orleans a week ago Friday and decided to give chase. A few years back, I got a nice photo of a Canadian National locomotive crossing the bridge at Akers, Louisiana and I wanted to see if I might be able to get something similar on this trip. I knew going into the chase that the light was going to be against me, but I figured I would try it just the same.
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| Northbound empty coal train bearing down on Ponchatoula. |
I discovered the area around Akers has been renovated a bit since my last trip and with the way the sun had lined up almost perfectly with the tracks there wasn't going to be a good shot here. (It was perfect in that it was perfectly awful.) So I kept going north until I came to Ponchatoula, which is just south of Hammond, Louisiana.
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| Roaring through Ponchatoula, Louisiana on Jan. 27, 2012. |
Ponchatoula looks like a nice little town. It has an old steam locomotive in a static display -- I will post that later -- and some old Illinois Central cars out by its depot. It reminded me a lot of a lot of other little towns I have been through over the years, including one close by me -- Ashland, Massachusetts. Anyway, after scouting around I realized that there wasn't going to be a good angle to get a shot without shooting directly into the sun and there wasn't a southbound to be had anywhere, so I just decided to make the best of what I had.
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