At 5 PM on a Saturday afternoon a trio of Illinois Central Gulf units - GP40 3033, GP38-2 9602 ABRAHAM LINCOLN, and GP40R 3104 - were southbound at Eagle Street, on their way from Mays Yard to the railroad's intermodal facility at Stuyvesant Docks Yard to pick up an outbound piggyback train. For about 25 years the locomotives for the IC and ICG piggyback trains would run light between Mays Yard, where the units were serviced, and the intermodal terminal (and vice versa); but this practice was eliminated by fueling the engines on the southbound train at McComb and then letting the power sit at Stuy Docks Yard. The two tracks on this side of the engines belonged to the New Orleans Public Belt, and the empty space in the foreground had accommodated two NOPB-KCS interchange tracks which were removed around 1980. |