Nostalgia & History > Meridian & Bigbee (before G&W) 1995

My biggest regret, as far as railfanning goes, was not shooting the Meridian and Bigbee more than I did. Granted, I was just a kid with a cruddy Kodak 110 camera, but I should've shot them more. Their yard was only about 3 or 4 blocks from my childhood home on A Street. 

The attached photos show one of their road trains coming in from Pennington, AL. The IC Switcher in the first Image was actually being used by the KCS, and was waiting for the road train to clear so they could go down to the pulpwood yard behind the Goodyear shop on 22nd Ave. The only thing I could remember about the IC unit is that KCS leased a couple of them for a few months strictly for yard and transfer duty. I only saw 2 of them, but they were neat little units. 

Back to the topic at hand, during this time on the M&B, they were running at least 2 road trains daily and a couple of transfer runs. Pulpwood and Wood chips were king during this time. It wasn't uncommon to see a solid unit train of nothing but former GM&O wood chip hoppers or the newer Greenville style hoppers that M&B had tons of. The motive power on the M&B was old Paducah Geep's including a couple of High Nosed Geep's, like the one pictured. 

Nowadays, the M&B runs once per day, if you're lucky. They have fall under the G&W banner and now use the generic EMD GP38-2's and SD40-2's that are painted in the loud orange and yellow. 

Enjoy.

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I think the bridge failure in 2007 put an end to M&B's use as a through-route. Forever. 

ctillnc Wrote:
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> I think the bridge failure in 2007 put an end to
> M&B's use as a through-route. Forever. 

It was replaced, but I think that was the final nail in the coffin. They go all they way to Montgomery now to interchange with CSX, but no run through or detour trains have ran since Katrina (other than the rocket train). Shortly after Katrina, CSX ran an autorack train over the M&B and as they were navigating the 18Th avenue interchange to cut through the KCS yard to get to the KCS Speedway, they laid down about 20 autoracks. After that nothing has came through, and after the rocket train accident, that sealed the deal. 

Two big shippers between Meridian and the Tombigbee River. Virtually nothing between the east bank of the Tombigbee and Selma. Some business around Selma, but the big prize is the SABIC (ex-GE) polycarbonate plant at Burkville.

Used to catch the Myrtlewood Turn out of Selma, Al on CSXT (L&N). M&B ran two turns to Myrtlewood, Al back then. Liked seeing their Geeps since the appeared well maintained.
Seem to recall they also had an ex-Santa Fe CF7 that came to Myrtlewood on occasion.

Steve Panzik
Chiloquin, Or



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/19 03:13 by ln844south.