Passenger Trains > Arrived Grenada

Today is the ribbon cutting for Grenada Railway, now owned by North Central Mississippi Regional Rail Authority, and leased to Iowa Pacific.  There's a lot of work to do to make this into a real railroad again, but it's also nice to pause and remember that I arrived at this station, on a train that looked a lot like this, dozens of times in the 1960's.  My mother grew up about four blocks from the station, and I think I knew everybody that worked here.  It was part of why I ended up a railroader. 

The guy who took this picture, Joe Marascalco, grew up in Grenada, hung out at the same depot, and knew everybody that worked here in the 1990's.  He is now a CN/IC engineer in Memphis, and he worked along with his friend Robert Riley, his mother Dolly Marascalco, and two really great public servants, Larry Hart (Mayor of Water Valley and a former IC engineer) and Pablo Diaz (head of Grenada County Economic Development) to save this railroad.  I'm glad to know them all, and I am sure that Mayor Hart and Mr. Diaz will be great partners in the revival of this line.

Polar Express will come to Batesville, MS this holiday season.  Over 7,600 tickets have already been sold and we will likely run 80 trains before it's all over....

---

Time machine

Congratulations, Ed, and good luck with the new operations.

Jim

lets get an e unit to match

Very cool Ed!  What kind of power will you be using on the line?

Back in 1988 I had the privilage of riding across Mississippi on the Columbus & Greenville on their business car "King Cotton" (IC President Wayne Johnson's car) with CAGY President and CEO "Mr. Sam" Wilhite and just 3 other guests.  When we got to Winona I was given the key and the task of unlocking the swing gate across the IC to allow us cross and then swinging it back and locked against the CAGY.  Today the CAGY diamond at Winona is gone and the "King Cotton" is stored on IP's Saratoga & North Creek.

I can't find the photo someone took of me at Winona, but here is an image from earlier that day at West Point, MS on the C&G.

Tim

---

Certainly most of us noticed the anachronism on the first photo, after admiring the Iowa Pacific
passenger consist!

During my short period dispatching for the ICG, one of the older heads from down south,
Hubie Simmons, had a funny story about when he worked at Grenada a long time ago.
The retired engineers would gather at the depot every morning to await the arrival
of one of Mr. Johnston's fine passenger trains.  They would sit in the
shade of the depot and it was the job of the "youngest" man in seniority to look
down the tracks at the block signal to see when it went red to announce the approach
of the train (when it had gone by the next siding in that direction, which tumbled the opposing
signals).  

Sounds like Ed Ellis is back in his briar patch. Good luck! Accordng to a recent story in Trains it appears IP has trackage rights into Memphis over the CN/IC and operates south to Canton, MS - just 23 miles from Jackson, MS. While I know the first priority is building up a traffic base with the paper and lumber companies, let's hope we can soon see a scheduled passenger train beyond the Polar express. The ultimate of course would be to get rights into Jackson to operate Jackson-Chicago Pullman service connecting to the City of New Orleans in Memphis! IC had that service on the Panama Ltd. as late as 1966 (only yesterday).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/15 13:17 by palmland.

Glad you are the one to bring it back to it prime.

Theodore Picraux
St. Peters, MO
Shuttletrain's Wanderings