My second morning on AMTRAK’s train number two dawned foggy and grey just outside Houston, Texas as I continued my trek toward New Orleans. Checking the AMTRAK website, it showed that we were 45 minutes early. Unusual.
I heard the call for breakfast in the dining car and headed that way. I got to sit with an interesting fellow who was heading to new Orleans for an educator’s meeting. He was a New Orleans native that now lives in Washington, D.C. He was very outspoken about New Orleans and its plight after Katrina.
As we ate breakfast, the train ground to a halt and there it stayed for the next two hours. Our forty five minute surplus had immediately been transformed into an hour and one half delay. It seems that a freight had run a signal in Beaumont, just ahead, and they were having to be relieved of duty.
We finally started trundling toward Beaumont, and were nearly two hours late when we arrived there. We passed over the Sabine River and into Louisiana, near where Hurricane Rita made landfall three years ago. As with most of our hurricane ravaged areas, the occasional blue tarp. We eased through Lake Charles, keeping US-90 alongside us, as it has been since yesterday afternoon. We had to stop a couple of times to align switches, but we were making decent time.
We passed through the tiny town of Rayne, Louisiana, famous for a big snow in 1895 that dumped twenty four inches on the area. That’s right…twenty four inches! In Louisiana. It is the all-time record for the state. And just thirty miles from the Gulf of Mexico.
We puled into the pretty station at Lafayette and then turned southeast toward New Iberia and Morgan City. Lots of bridges, boats and bayous as we eased along. At Morgan City, we crossed the Atchafalaya River, which the Mississippi River wants to explout as a faster and easier way to the Gulf if it weren’t for the billions of dollars being spent on the massive control structure at Morganza that keeps the Mississippi in her present course.
Here is the Atchafalya…
We made our final station stop before New Orleans at Schriever. It was on to the Big Easy from there.
Soon the Huey P. Long Bridge came into view and we got ready to enter the city. Here is a picture from the train as we rounded a curve leading to the bridge…
Here is the view of the Mighty Mississippi from the bridge…which cars and the train share…
Here is a view of the levee…
A few minutes later, we were backed into the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, just over an hour late. The Superdome and UNO Arena came into view as we backed in.
As we waited in the vestibule for the train to come to a stop, all my new California friends posed for a goodbye picture…from the left, Gar and Nancy from Newport Beach and Mike and Celeste from near San Francisco…
It was off to the Airport for me for a quick flight home.
