Eastern Railroad Discussion > New Orleans - Baton Rouge

After reading TRAINS magazine article about the Mardi Gras trains successful beginning along the Gulf Coast, does Louisiana intend or desire to extend this Gulf Coast Corridor northwest to Baton Rouge?  It is 79 miles on the CPKC from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.  Passenger trains in 1960s were running the 79 miles in 105 minutes.  Chemical plants on this corridor are multiplying, so CPKC has incentive to work with the state of Louisiana. 

Thank you for this "Yankee" to learn some knowledge of Louisiana politics.  

MEKoch Wrote:
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> After reading TRAINS magazine article about the
> Mardi Gras trains successful beginning along the
> Gulf Coast, does Louisiana intend or desire to
> extend this Gulf Coast Corridor northwest to Baton
> Rouge?  It is 79 miles on the CPKC from Baton
> Rouge to New Orleans.  Passenger trains in 1960s
> were running the 79 miles in 105 minutes. 
> Chemical plants on this corridor are multiplying,
> so CPKC has incentive to work with the state of
> Louisiana. 
>
> Thank you for this "Yankee" to learn some
> knowledge of Louisiana politics.  

I guess you missed where CPKC made a deal with Amtrak, where in exchange for supporting the merger they would allow one round-trip per day between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. KCS ran an inspection train before the merger that included the head of the FRA under Joe Biden, as well as now former Louisiana governor John Bel-Edwards. For all his faults, and there are many, he did make this a priority and on his way out the door when he was termed out, he secured funding to develop this route. I believe they are actually working on a service development plan for it now. Intended to start near the end of the decade. 

and it sounds like they're going to try to do more than just one round-trip that CPKC promised, without any infrastructure upgrades.

To bad they cant run a Mardi Gras train from Mobile to Baton Rouge train. 
That would help the service grow more

Jerry Martin
Los Angeles, CA
Central Coast Railroad Festival

GP25 Wrote:
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> To bad they cant run a Mardi Gras train from
> Mobile to Baton Rouge train. 
> That would help the service grow more

I think it's entirely possible that if they structure the expansion right, they probably could share some of the train sets.

We're still at least a year or two off from this potentially happening. But it does look like it is going to happen. The work Bel-Edwards did makes it hard for his Nazi successor, who has tipped that he's not a fan, to stop it.