New Gulf Coast service (New Orleans - Mobile and Baton Rouge)

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Went to a coffee shop near the Gulfport Amtrak station at 11:15 this morning and hung around the area until 11:45 without seeing any trains. I did notice some orange-vested workers taking pictures of the signs & platform. The Gulfport station needs some tidying up before it's ready for service. Later, at 12:35 I was in Long Beach and what did I see but the test train westbound.

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DonNewcomb said:
Went to a coffee shop near the Gulfport Amtrak station at 11:15 this morning and hung around the area until 11:45 without seeing any trains. I did notice some orange-vested workers taking pictures of the signs & platform. The Gulfport station needs some tidying up before it's ready for service. Later, at 12:35 I was in Long Beach and what did I see but the test train westbound.
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The milepost shown in the picture (743) is the L&N milepost. Zero is Louisville KY Union Station and the L&N office building next to it. (Are these structures still there, and are they being used, and if for both, by what/who?) Almost all the pre NC&StL merger lines of the L&N are mileposted from that point. That is, most branches do not start with zero but as an equation with the mainline milepost at their start.
 
OK. Forgive this possibly stupid question but........what is this test train for?? What is being 'tested?' It can't be station fit with only one car. They did one of those in Miami with the full Silver Meteor consist and found it stuck out over the road.

But that's not the case here; so what is being evaluated with this one-car train??? 🤨
 
alpha3 said:
OK. Forgive this possibly stupid question but........what is this test train for?? What is being 'tested?' It can't be station fit with only one car. They did one of those in Miami with the full Silver Meteor consist and found it stuck out over the road.

But that's not the case here; so what is being evaluated with this one-car train??? 🤨
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It's purpose is to familarize crews with the route. Crews have to be certified to operate on routes so they know the location of signals, speed limits, etc.
 
MikefromCrete said:
It's purpose is to familarize crews with the route. Crews have to be certified to operate on routes so they know the location of signals, speed limits, etc.
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Pre-inaugural runs also help familiarize lineside people with the idea that "any time is train-time." That doesn't seem to work in Florida, but hopefully it will do better in this case.
 
Agent said:
A test train had a run-in with a pickup truck on Tuesday. Thankfully, only minor injuries for those in the pickup.

https://www.fox10tv.com/2023/03/29/amtrak-train-smashes-into-pickup-truck-cross-track-irvington/
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In that news story, the reporter interviewed a person who said that crews repaired the crossing gate after the crash to only have it destroyed again by a truck shortly after. How crazy is that??

“After they done fixed the track, there was another – a big truck, tow truck or whatever truck, come by,” she said. “And the arm thing was coming down and hit the truck and broke it off.”
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DonNewcomb said:
That's Alabama for you.
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Mississippi also. 25-30 years ago, my wife observed a similar stupid incident from her fifth floor office above the Gulfport HWY 49 CSX crossing. The gates had lowered for a KCS-CSX interchange. The KCS train was approaching the crossing at 4-5 mph. The driver of a semi-trailer loaded with grain decided the load was more important than a 1-2 minute delay, started around the lowered gate. The engineer, blowing the horn continuously, rolled the loaded semi-trailer in the middle of the crossing. I can imagine what the engineer was saying to his conductor, though not appropriate for a family-oriented forum. The local news said it took more than 18 hours to clean up the grain and reopen the crossing. :eek:
 
Hytec said:
above the Gulfport HWY 49 CSX crossing.
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As I recall, some 30-ish years ago there was a much more spectacular accident at that crossing that involved a low-boy semi-trailer loaded with 10' diameter concrete culvert sections. One of the few cases of a train-truck accident where the truck won.

Speaking of Gulfport: I was checking out the station there yesterday. They added some bollards to protect the aluminum platform from stray automobiles. They also filled in a hole in the cement walkway with ballast but otherwise it doesn't seem close to ready for passengers.
 
When they find $100 million and actually start rebuilding the KCS spillway bridge… when I see equipment out there… I’ll believe in BTR-NOL returning. Until then, all talk.
 
DonNewcomb said:
As I recall, the NOL to Mobile section was a very small part of the Humming Bird. The entire route was New Orleans to Chicago.
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jphjaxfl said:
The Humingbird was a Cincinnati to New Orleans Train with a branch from Bowling Green to Memphis. It carried through Pullmans from Chicago to New Orleans. I rode the bird many times in the late 60s until it was abruptly terminated in Birmingham.
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Palmland said:
You are correct: it was a small part of the route. The Hummingbird was a New Orleans to Cincinnati train. The Georgian was a Chicago to Atlanta train. The two exchanged sleepers in Nashville late at night. But, since it was impossible to beat IC’s Panama Ltd., the sleepers from Chicago only went to Mobile and Montgomery.

It was quite a switching performance in Nashville that I witnessed one time. One switcher on the head end swapped baggage cars while one on the rear exchanges sleepers.

Sad but true. Although I think the Southern was more notorious for its tactic to cut trains back to the state line to avoid I.C.C. Involvement.
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George Harris said:
The direct Bowling Green to Memphis line has significant portions abandoned, so the train would have to go through Nashville. And to add insult to injury, the route from Nashville to Memphis via Jackson TN is no more, either. The possible route would be Nashville to McKenzie on the original NC&StL then the original L&N thence to Memphis. This route manages to miss all intermediate points with any significant population on either of these previous through routes. All parts west of Bruceton TN are unsignaled. (The Bowling Green to Memphis line never had signals. The Nashville to Memphis route had CTC throughout, up until sometime after the NC's takeover by the L&N.)
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jis said:
Most likely hand cranked Wheelchair lifts like is used almost at every low floor platform station served by standard height floor.

The platforms themselves are ADA accessible since anything else would be illegal in this day and age.
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When inaugurated in 1946, the “Humming Bird” (Yes, two words) was operated solely between Cincinnati and New Orleans. The L&N marketed the name “Humming Bird” as a connection of that original run splitting and merging in Bowling Green (Ky.) to Memphis. The L&N also had a similar connection with the L&N “Pan American”, a much older train (on the official timetable), which also ran on the same Cincy-NOLA route ─ via Mobile and Gulfport.

Since around 1951, the “Humming Bird” operated in a split configuration with even more so convoluted timetable numbering. With the originally scheduled "Georgian" (ATL-STL) and "Humming Bird" crossing paths in Nashville, numbered sections were added under the marketing names of both trains, with cars switched in and out of consists at both Nashville and Evansville. This resulted in the C&EI public timetable also offering the names “Humming Bird” and "Georgian" ─ essentially a “Humming Bird / Georgian". Both the original Cincy-NOLA and the “Confounded Bird” (as it were) operated concurrently, with Nashville being the primary point of car interchange.

The St. Louis section of the "Georgian" was discontinued around December 1967, although connections to and from St. Louis were substituted. But by March 1968, even the Chicago section was dropped. All that remained of that then-15 car consist (in previous years often swollen to 20 cars when I rode it during the early 1960s) was a single coach (or two, during winter holidays) and a baggage car (or two), basically a nameless concoction of daily minimal service between Atlanta and St. Louis. The last mail-express service would end in April 1968, following the Post Office Dept.’s (now the USPS) decision in 1967 to cancel RPO mail contracts. The name "Humming Bird" would still applied to the remaining original New Orleans - Cincinnati service, Trains 5 and 6 (which ended in early Jan. 1969), but the name "Humming Bird / Georgian" was dropped officially from all L&N service through Evansville, once the Chicago section was cancelled. The “Pan” (“Pan American”) would survive until Amtrak takeover.

And yes, all passenger trains on the Memphis line were discontinued in 1968 (one in Feb and one in March), and the end of passenger service doomed the Memphis Line as a thru route. The vertical-lift bridge over the Tennessee River at Danville TN, was the first abandonment that cut the line into segments. Its last use was April 1978. On Aug. 1, 1979, L&N abandoned the track over the bridge at Danville, and Danville was declared embargoed and eliminated from all tariffs as a station. At the same time, track on both sides of the bridge was reclassified from 'main track' to 'industrial track'. In the early 1980s, SBD (Seaboard System) "stole" (from Tenn.) the lift-span and its towers, along with three fixed-truss spans, by placing them on barges and floating them upstream to be used on another rail line near Bridgeport, Ala.
 
rookzie said:
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When inaugurated in 1946, the “Humming Bird” (Yes, two words) was operated solely between Cincinnati and New Orleans. The L&N marketed the name “Humming Bird” as a connection of that original run splitting and merging in Bowling Green (Ky.) to Memphis. The L&N also had a similar connection with the L&N “Pan American”, a much older train (on the official timetable), which also ran on the same Cincy-NOLA route ─ via Mobile and Gulfport.

Since around 1951, the “Humming Bird” operated in a split configuration with even more so convoluted timetable numbering. With the originally scheduled "Georgian" (ATL-STL) and "Humming Bird" crossing paths in Nashville, numbered sections were added under the marketing names of both trains, with cars switched in and out of consists at both Nashville and Evansville. This resulted in the C&EI public timetable also offering the names “Humming Bird” and "Georgian" ─ essentially a “Humming Bird / Georgian". Both the original Cincy-NOLA and the “Confounded Bird” (as it were) operated concurrently, with Nashville being the primary point of car interchange.

The St. Louis section of the "Georgian" was discontinued around December 1967, although connections to and from St. Louis were substituted. But by March 1968, even the Chicago section was dropped. All that remained of that then-15 car consist (in previous years often swollen to 20 cars when I rode it during the early 1960s) was a single coach (or two, during winter holidays) and a baggage car (or two), basically a nameless concoction of daily minimal service between Atlanta and St. Louis. The last mail-express service would end in April 1968, following the Post Office Dept.’s (now the USPS) decision in 1967 to cancel RPO mail contracts. The name "Humming Bird" would still applied to the remaining original New Orleans - Cincinnati service, Trains 5 and 6 (which ended in early Jan. 1969), but the name "Humming Bird / Georgian" was dropped officially from all L&N service through Evansville, once the Chicago section was cancelled. The “Pan” (“Pan American”) would survive until Amtrak takeover.

And yes, all passenger trains on the Memphis line were discontinued in 1968 (one in Feb and one in March), and the end of passenger service doomed the Memphis Line as a thru route. The vertical-lift bridge over the Tennessee River at Danville TN, was the first abandonment that cut the line into segments. Its last use was April 1978. On Aug. 1, 1979, L&N abandoned the track over the bridge at Danville, and Danville was declared embargoed and eliminated from all tariffs as a station. At the same time, track on both sides of the bridge was reclassified from 'main track' to 'industrial track'. In the early 1980s, SBD (Seaboard System) "stole" (from Tenn.) the lift-span and its towers, along with three fixed-truss spans, by placing them on barges and floating them upstream to be used on another rail line near Bridgeport, Ala.
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Wow, thanks for the history.
 
rookzie said:
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And yes, all passenger trains on the Memphis line were discontinued in 1968 (one in Feb and one in March), and the end of passenger service doomed the Memphis Line as a thru route. The vertical-lift bridge over the Tennessee River at Danville TN, was the first abandonment that cut the line into segments. Its last use was April 1978. On Aug. 1, 1979, L&N abandoned the track over the bridge at Danville, and Danville was declared embargoed and eliminated from all tariffs as a station. At the same time, track on both sides of the bridge was reclassified from 'main track' to 'industrial track'. In the early 1980s, SBD (Seaboard System) "stole" (from Tenn.) the lift-span and its towers, along with three fixed-truss spans, by placing them on barges and floating them upstream to be used on another rail line near Bridgeport, Ala.
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Magnificent stuff! As an outsider, may I ask where Danville TN is? Google maps can't seem to find it :)
 
leccy said:
Magnificent stuff! As an outsider, may I ask where Danville TN is? Google maps can't seem to find it :)
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Underwater.

The ex-town of Danville was drowned by the Kentucky Dam. The lift bridge in question is about 50 miles south of the dam. Search for "Benton-Houston Ferry, TN" in Google Maps, or grab the .kmz file from Mississippi Rails to display the L&N in your Google Earth, and follow it east from Memphis until it crosses the Tennessee River.
 

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