Two: St. Charles Parish, Louisiana Jan. 15, 2016

Industrial locomotives. You can find a lot of them in the general vicinity of New Orleans. The grain operations on either side of the Mississippi are so large that they need tending by permanently assigned locomotives to keep the flow of hopper cars coming and going. A few years back, I toured the south side of the river and during my last trip I took a drive up River Road in St. Rose to see what I could find.

My first stop was the Bunge plant in Destrehan, Louisiana. They had two locomotives tied up when I passed by. The first was an Alco S-4. I wish I could have seen it working, but finding an Alco alive or dead is always a thrill to me. 

Tied up next to the Alco was an EMD switcher in a slightly different paint scheme. I have to say I like the blue dip better than the two-tone job on the EMD. But that is just me. After I clicked off a few shots -- the best I could get through a chain link fence and without trooping through someone's backyard. I kept heading upstream on River Street. 

The next stop was a more modern EMD product tied up at the ADM site in Garyville, Louisiana. This was a handsome unit a bit of a bonus. Like the two Bunge units it was also tied up. (I was there pretty early in the morning, but with operations as large as these facilities on the Mississippi I am not sure that matters.) Anyway, I got another shot through chain link and under the branches of a tree that had a lot of character.

The New Orleans area sees a lot of traffic and while I was there I saw trains from Union Pacific, Canadian National, CSX, Norfolk Southern and Kansas City Southern. It is certainly a railhub, but I think I enjoy seeing the industrial locomotives most of all.