One of the unfortunate casualties of the great flood of 2016 was my slide collection. I lost many thousands of slides to that event. I have about two shoe boxes of slides left (perhaps less than a thousand). But those slides that were spared were generally “seconds” and other “unimportant” slides. Indeed, they were in shoe boxes located on a high shelf in a closet only because there was no room in the drawers that housed my collection.
The photos I’ve been showing these past few months are scans of slides, and in a few cases, prints that managed to survive. Here’s another of those survivors:
The Louisiana Cypress Lumber Company was a fairly extensive operation in the first half of the 20th century. They had a store and mill complex located on Highway 51 south of Ponchatoula, Louisiana. They also had a railroad operation that hauled the cypress timber to the mill. Locomotive #3 is a small 2-8-0 that was retired and put on display in front of the store on Highway 51. This photo was captured (to the best of my memory) sometime back in the 1960s.
This locomotive still survives, and was moved many years ago into the heart of Ponchatoula, located at the intersection of E. Pine Street and SE. Railroad Avenue. It’s right across the street from the former Illinois Central depot. It’s in generally good shape, though it suffers from somewhat “misguided” decoration on occasion. But . . . she still survives!
-Jack
We had a some what large steamer at the Oklahoma State fair grounds a few years back that they refused to let go.. Than just about a year or so decided to donate to local R.R. Museum. It stood for over 25 yrs. with birds just nesting and craping all over it.. Local news could not even tell us what model or railroad it had belong to . Hope to see it up and running soon.
If you ever need info or such from around here. please give a shout or e-mail!
later Gator,, Boudreaux
Chief work horse of BAYOU CREST EXPRESS R.R.
Boudreaux, hope something comes of that locomotive, even if it’s just a cosmetic restoration.
Over in Port Arthur, Texas there’s a big controversy over the fate of a steamer on display there. The locomotive is former KCS #503, a ten-wheeler, and was about to be scrapped by the City. Someone found out about it, and organized a fundraiser which raised over $65,000 to be used to purchase the locomotive. When the City realized the locomotive had worth, they cancelled the scrapping, but also decided to not sell it to the fundraising gentleman. The last I heard, they were going to start site remediation of asbestos leaked onto the ground (which is why they had decided to scrap the loco in the first place). But there’s no word what they plan to do with the locomotive.
cool photo Jack, i’ll add it to my collection