Slow Riding & An Inniciating Chase in Tall Pine Country

Dummyline Road, unbeknownst to most, extends south of La.16, east of Amite City, Louisiana.
Unbeknownst to most is the fact that this was Kentwood & Eastern RR territory back in the day,
call it the early 20th Century.

This will be a very brief and casual history hunt
so don't expect any heavy reading.

It was "Sunday Riding", though it was Saturday.

Buckle your seat  belts.
I, after doing the preliminary Cherokee  "Dance of Good Fortune"
around the aging semi-off road motorcycle, I boarded and
dove south on thickly graveled Dummyline Rd., the route of the K&E's
spur which served as a collection conduit for cut logs  to a possible transfer site.
If I remember right, the railroad in the beginning was "narrow gauge" and then was converted.
I'll go out on a limb and say that most "woods railroads" were narrow gauge as were
plantation ones, so possibly the woods engines did drag their booty to a  mill.
I also remember reading that there were several mills along the route.
Check out the link above.

Below is a rough map of the first leg of this ride.

Whole First Leg.

Detailed first leg north.

The arrows above are where I described the road as turning right, then left.

The left arrow is the west spur. 

I should have gone down it.

The road follows the pine straight rail bed which served as the trunk of the access route.

The road turns right then left.

Straight ahead seems to me to be a continuation of the rail route.

When the road jagged right it seemed to me to be a diverging route of a limb going west.

At the intersection was a mound.  I did not dig around because guessing is easier.  I'll guess the mound is the

remnant of a remote log sizing location where the logs were trimmed and cut to fit the log cars.

The road melded into one with a "hard surface".

 Reaching La.40, I went east anticipating seeing the famous Uneedus Superdome. 

It is so famous, and a popular tourist location, that  there is a parking lot provided complete with clean

  restrooms and a cleaner snack stand. 

The historical significance is that it is the original home of the Tangipahoa Saints who 

moved south in 1967 to a larger town.

 I sincerely wanted a picture showing the beauty of the Tickfaw River.  That didn't work out.

I was also late in shooting another shot, one of the gorgeous overhanging trees.

It is a beauty spot, here lamely captured. I was out of time on the whole ride.

This is Railroad St. in Folsom, La. Its significance is unbeknownst by most, also.

West of Folsom, La. 40 is a dream road with a hitch. The hitch is its growing population.

At Blond I turned north passing La.'s version of South Fork.

The road leading to  it is named "Mary Ellen".

At Enon I went east on La.16 to La.1072, a great road.  But, I wanted gravel into the dark woods.

North of Blond I reached a significant place, unbeknownst to most.

Here is where I threw away my watches at the beginning of each ride north. 

  If you found these, they're  mine.

 This place overlooks the Bogue Chitto River Valley.

Crossing the river just south of  Enon.

A town home in a home town.

La.1072, going north from La.16.

A small sand and gravel operation.

Paralleling the old GMO rail bed (see map above)

As the road turned north, the rail route continued east to Rio intersecting the main line.

This, I believe, is the actual bed going east. It is preserved by the power line's ROW.

I turned north into the woods off of  La.1072.

Very sad.

The roads were GREAT.

Unbeknownst to me, until this location, was that I'd ridden  in a circle.

And back up the hill to find my watch.
It was gone.

Sunday.

I sat alone at my laptop thinking about any hope I'd had about actually photographing the

north and south bound City of New Orleans Amtrak trains as they met.

 I have had only one close instance of two meeting Amtrak trains,

that of two on the Sunset Route at Cade when Amtrak once ran

2 trains on Friday. That cannot happen again locally unless a very weird situation occurs.

I shook myself by the collar of my t-shirt.

"Get up and go, fool".

I can't figure if I channeled Fred Sanford or Mr. T, both personal heroes.

I went into the house and asked if anyone wanted to come with me.

Betsy and  Geoffrey yelled with excitement that they wanted to come with me.

Ah, an initiation was in order.  Geoffrey had been along, but Betsy had not.

She remarked that she could not believe she was on a Train Chase, 

especially on one so special.

We raced to Amite only to see the southbound racing south.

The only hope was that it would stop above the Hammond Depot

and we could shoot the meet there.

We arrived at the Hammond Canadian National RR property.

Sadly, the southbound  train had gone south.

The southbound was late so I suspect the northbound train going north had to

 pull aside so the southbound train going south could get by..

I got to explain what these were.
I had to lie since I  had no idea.
Neither did they, a fact which did not limit the freedom of information I was allotted to convey.

And that is a ........

From that location we could see the Hammond Rail Depot.

Across from the depot were the old rails that bent toward Covington, now long gone.

The horns announced the northbound train's arrival coming north.

All of these pictures are not by me but by Betsy and Geoffry since my camera croaked.

This car had "Amtrak Coaches" written on the side. 

This was very special as I've never seen one. 

It seemed to have replaced the baggage car behind the one engine train.

Most Amtrak trains on the La.section of the Sunset Route use 2 engines.

Most have ugly beat up baggage cars.

I'm thinking  this was an oldie goldie Amtrk passenger car, a UD-RA 9.

These are the upgrades.

The difference is seen here.

It exited. We would chase it north after getting turned north.

We were neck and neck for a while.

At one point we pulled away.

 Co pursuiter from the cockpit of the pursuit car.

Then there was a poof and it disappeared into hyper space going north.

Geoffrey brought back his collection from the junction.
He was so protective of it he went to sleep right there.
I suggested to his mother that possibly he might have a foot situation.

Oh, if you know what those metal strips are, please let me know.
He is very inquisitive and not knowing turns his feet red, so she said.
They seem to be shims of some sort.

Also, there is the matter of that steel bar with the groove in it.
Another foot reddener.

That's it.

Hope you don't have  his problem.