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We have our Saturday traditions: breakfast at Sunrise on Second Street (one of the few places in Slidell that make a decent breakfast), then the local farmers' market for good, fresh, inexpensive produce . After that it's up in the air.
Today was the day before Mothers' Day and we were scheduled to have a brunch with Hubby's Mother and sister in Metairie around noon. We had a couple of hours to kill and decided to wander on to the site where - just a few weeks ago - an Amtrak train derailed due to either misjudgement or pure stupidity.
Backstory: A driver hauling a flatbed carrying some tanks from the Textron facilty in Slidell misjudged the speed of an Amtrak train that runs this route every day and straddled his truck across the tracks while waiting for a red light to turn green.
The results are shown below.
This is the engine that was the lead engine on that day. It was covered at the behest of Amtrak officials.
The impact of the accident caused the metal on this car to curl back.
I took this photo to show the proximity of the second engine to the very busy Front Street in Slidell.
I certainly hope that the drive
We discovered that we woke up the security forces at Textron and decided to move on.
I remembered it as being "Train Day" in Slidell. Train Day was created to bring attention to the romance of travelling by rail. There was a tiny "to do" at the Slidell train station that we went to look into. A pretty nondescript place, we got our goodie bag and then proceeded on to walking a few miles around the park to walk off breakfast.
Our next stop was a small park situated on Bayou Bonfouca and the local Amtrak station.
Our exercise proved to be very interesting. Slidell mornings begin slowly and work their way into slow afternoons, which I like.
Carved by Slidell artist Phil Galatas this very cool frog was once a stump post Katrina
This bird makes sure that you keep out of the flower beds.
Another bird on the job
On Patrol
Magnolias are just beginning to bloom and I was frustrated that I didn't have a ladder with me to capture the beauty of their flowers.
Thanks for sharing a few hours of Saturday. Any suggestions, comments are always welcome. Hit the "comments" button, y'all!!! Let us know how we're doing!
3 comments:
I would LOVE for our country to rediscover (not to mention respect) rail travel again... As it stands - it's horribly expensive and d*mned inconvenient at least for the southern/southwestern states where one must travel only on certain days and then only to certain destinations. Over 9 hours to New Orleans from Houston, and even then like every other Tuesday IF the sun shines suitably and the local ticket agent had a good dream the night before. :( Even if it was weekly on Friday morning...it's NINE hours to get 5 to 5-1/2 hours down the road - which totally fubars a weekend in NOLA if 18 hours at least are whittled out for the train trip.
Great pictures (the magnolias...sigh!)! :)
Pity the truck driver was ignorant...jeeze.
Cheers!
I love the pics of the magnolias. I wish I could grow them...tried once...failed.
I can't believe the driver survived that accicent.
I'm with you, Wendy. The reason it takes so long from Houston to NOLA is because Amtrak has to yield to the freight trains because the freights own the track.
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