Steam & Excursion > SP 4449 in Louisiana

April 1977
4449 is rolling south on the Illinois Central (ICG) a few miles south of Ponchatoula,LA headed to New Orleans.
This was the early days of the epic 3,655 mile trip to the west coast and Portland on the Amtrak Transcontinental Steam Excursion.  
The train would remain in New Orleans for a few days before continuing west to Houston and beyond.

The second shot was earlier that day in a town I don't remember the name but ex-Wabash (and N&W) dome-observation-lounge 9310 brought up the rear (Budd 1950). 
Also in this small town it was nice to still see some local rail service with the car on the left.
Gary



 

---

---

Well done - First-class views.
Bob

Two very nice action photos. Wonder why the red lights on the rear are not on. 

HotWater Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Two very nice action photos. Wonder why the red
> lights on the rear are not on. 

Not sure why the side marker lights are not lit on the dome obs.

As for the larger, rear marker light above the rear door, if that is a "Mars" light, I believe those would only come on during braking, or below a certain speed - say 20 mph, and also in an Emergency application.  Now that would be "as built".  Amtrak was probably not maintaining that large rear marker light at this late date.

Track looks a little lumpy in that first photo.  What's the speed limit there?  

ExStarlightHog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Track looks a little lumpy in that first photo. 
> What's the speed limit there?  

Don't remember what the max speed was but, I think we were doing a steady 70 MPH. And yes, That IC track was pretty rough at speeds above 70 MPH, even though the IC "Officials" on board kept telling is about the famous "Main Line of Mid-America, good for 110 MPH". Sure.

My experience in that time frame riding Amtrak on the IC was that when the welded rail was installed and the line single tracked, somehow they never got it tamped properly where the rail joints (and thus low spots) were.  It stayed bad at least into the 1990's as I remember.