it's of a PCC streetcar in Kenosa, WI. They cammed up the streetcar so as to show the foot-pedal accelerator in action. There are views of what the operator sees as the car moves down the track, the foot pedal control, and an under-carriage shot of the trucks and the accelerator itself.
Of course, all of the streetcars here in New Orleans use a hand throttle, but this is still a neat-but-geeky video.
The main gate of City Park, yesterday afternoon.
I spent some time at the Research Center of the Notarial Archives Office on Poydras Street last Tuesday, at the suggestion of the office's Archivist, Ms. Ann Wakefield. I had e-mailed Ms. Wakefield some time back, asking questions about what resources they might have to help me find more information on the Esplanade Barn owned/operated by the New Orleans City Railroad from 1861 to 1915.
The Hennick and Charlton book mentions that NOCRR constructed a barn at Esplanade and Bayou St. John in 1861, but that no photos were available. They have one transit map from the early 1900s which shows the barn's location, and that's the extent of their references. Since this barn would be visible from the end of the Carrollton Spur if it was still standing, I decided to dig a bit further. I came up empty-handed when I went back through all the resources I used to write my book on the Canal line. Then a friend who is an attorney suggested I try the Notarial Archives and/or Register of Conveyences offices. I started with the former and found their website (link above).
The office has scanned the 1883 Robinson Atlas of the city, and the plates from the atlas are available online. I drilled down through the 3rd District maps and found the plate which contains Esplanade at Bayou St. John. I found solid reference to the barn--the atlas indicates that the Esplanade tracks at that time ran to Bayou Rd. (now Moss St.), turned left there, followed the bayou for a block or so, then entered the barn from that side. The tracks exited the Esplanade front of the barn, enabling the mule cars to turn around without the need for a turntable.
After studying the plate, I contacted Ms. Wakefield to inquire whether there would be more resources in her office. That's when she suggested I come down and see.
The Notarial Archives Office is located at 1340 Poydras, the old Amaco Building. The current records office is on the 5th floor, and the Research Center is on the 3rd floor. The Research Center is a classic closed-stack archive/library. You register and sign in, then a staff member will guide you through your quest for information and documents. Since most of the notarial acts archived here deal with land transfers, it's a good idea to have a focus on a fixed building or location. Documents are referenced by which "square" they show. The "squares" are indicated in atlases like the Robinson Atlas. The staff was incredibly helpful, and we began to dig through the stuff they've indexed on the computer, images already scanned and saved digitally, then finally pulling actual maps and drawings in the area.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to come up with anything more tangible on the barn than the reference on the Robinson plate. We went through not only maps, but the archives of "acts" for 1860-1862, and 1913-1915, the range of years when the barn was constructed and demolished, respectively. I did find the Articles of Incorporation for the NOCRR, an interesting read in themselves, as well as an act passed by the city authorizing the NOCRR to construct the Poland Avenue barn. That'll be a project for another day.
What really, really, really impressed me about the Research Center staff was the phone call I got last Wednesday. While researching stuff for another person, one of the staff members pulled a map/diagram that was in the neighborhood I was looking for. She remembered my quest and rang me up to let me know what she found. I'll be back to look at that when I return to look at stuff on uptown facilities.
From a streetcar perspective, the most interesting thing I found was the detail in the property surveys archived by the Research Center. One of the reference numbers we pulled was incorrect, and they got out a real estate transaction document for a property on Common Street, near Carondelet. These documents look an awful like a modern appraisal form, lots of details about the property, along with a sketch of the "square" the property is inside. Since there was no photographs available at this time, these transactions were accompanied by sketches of the front view of the property. Some of these would make great art posters in and of themselves. The Research Center realizes this and they're now selling some of these as posters.
So, many thanks to Ms. Wakefield and her staff, even though the place is just corrupting for an old history teacher. It's so easy to go off on tangents, and I'll have to keep my focus and priorities straight when visiting the office, lest I end up moving in. :-)
Perley A. Thomas streetcar 932 (left), outbound towards the cemeteries, is about to pass 952 (right), which is inbound to the French Market terminal at Esplanade and the river, on a sunny afternoon at Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue.
Operations on Canal are a bit different with the 900s running rather than the Von Dullens. Here, inside the the "Canal Zone," which extends from the river to Claiborne Ave., riders board as they do on the 2000s, on the street side. Outside the Canal Zone, however, riders used the inside doors of the Von Dullens. Those doors aren't automatic on the 900s, so riders have to walk around to the street side to board. On N. Carrollton Avenue, the streetcars run in the inside auto lane, because the neutral ground is narrow. Having riders exit on the street side would be incredibly dangerous, since this would put them out in the middle of traffic. To avoid this, the operator stops the car at the stop and manually opens the inside rear door, and riders disembark onto the neutral ground.
On the Riverfront segment of the line, the raised platforms at each stop work great for the Von Dullens and the 400-series cars, but the 900s don't line up properly. To embark and disembark passengers along the river, the operator must pull up a couple of yards in front of the stations so passengers can board from the ground level.
Handicap access is, of course, not possible on the 900s, but will return to the Canal and Riverfront lines when the red ladies are re-built.
Yes, I know it's not a streetcar, but at least it's electric! This 1949 photo shows New Orleans City Councilman Walter Duffroc posing as a trolley bus goes by on the St. Claude line. The St. Claude streetcar was converted to bus service in 1948. In 1949, the buses were replaced by trolley coaches. The streetcars replaced were the Perley A. Thomas 1000-series, the last evolution of Mr. Thomas' arched-roof cars.
We had a request from a reader about streetcar operations below the Industrial Canal. I didn't have any photos of streetcars crossing the Industrial Canal, but then I remembered this trolley bus photo. Trolley buses ran in the city from 1929 to 1967.
921 passing Eighth Street:
921 leaving Napoleon and St. Charles Avenues for the inbound leg of the run:
Perley A. Thomas streetcar 921 arrives at St. Charles and Napoleon Avenues, completing the outbound leg of the first revenue run of the St. Charles line since the storm. 921 left Canal Station around 0515CST on Sunday morning, 11-November-2007.
The St. Charles line has been in service since 1831. The storm caused the line's longest service outage, having blown down a significant portion of the overhead wiring and damaging the track. On Saturday, 10-Nov-2007, NORTA ran a three streetcar "parade" to welcome back the line, and revenue service began today.
It's impossible to describe just how important having the 900s back running on St. Charles is to the morale of the city of New Orleans. About the only thing that would create this level of excitement would be a Super Bowl win by Da Saints.
Perley A. Thomas Streetcar 915 arrives at Lee Circle, November 10, 2007. 915 was part of a three car "parade" to mark the return of streetcar service to Uptown New Orleans.
I expected 915 to go the usual quarter-turn around Robert Edward, but the streetcar made the complete circle to return to Napoleon Avenue.
The Warren Easton Senior High School Marching Band led off a 3-streetcar opening run of the St. Charles line on Saturday afternoon. Their post-storm uniforms look fantastic!
900 led off the three streetcars.
Perley A. Thomas streetcar 915
The ad sign on the streetcars. You gotta love these graphics guys, they go to clipart.com or something, but they never find arched roof cars in all that stock artwork.
clicky for larger image
Every railroad has to occasionally do maintenance on their right-of-way, and the miniature railroad at City Park is no exception. We caught this train running along with a work crew who were clearing and testing the track in anticipation of the holiday season.
We're coming up quickly on Thanksgiving, which means we're rapidly coming up on "Celebration in the Oaks," the park's annual festival of lights, sound, and holiday cheer. Celebration in the Oaks begins on Thanksgiving night and runs through New Year's Eve.
One of the regular happenings of Celebration in the Oaks are the various "school nights," where the choir or band from various schools in the area will come and perform. Of course, all the parents, siblings, relatives, etc., come out to see the kids, so it's a fun time for all. The park opens up the kids' rides on these evenings, and the trains run as well. The trains are strung with lights for the evening runs, which is pretty, but nothing can compare to the beautiful bright colors of the miniature railroad on a pretty fall afternoon.
Is a hoot...
Rumble returns to the Avenue...There is no greater weapon for crusty old Orleanians to prove their superiority over the youth of today than delightfully embellished stories of their own hardscrabble childhoods and the 7-cent trips they took with their Nana down to the movie houses on Canal Street, followed by a visit to the Woolworth's lunch counter, all by way of somehow explaining what a great town New Orleans was before it all went to seed and by that I don't mean Hurricane Katrina but the advent of, say, indoor air-conditioning and microwave ovens.
Soooooo true!
George Friedman pointed out that I've been using inaccurate terminology when referring to the Randolph facility on Canal Street. The A. Phillip Randolph facility includes a streetcar SIS (Service, Inspection, and Storage) component. So, the entire facility is not the SIS, just the car barn.
Here's a shot of the SIS, better known as the Canal Barn, from two weeks ago:
clicky the image for a much higher resolution.
You can see the 900s that are not being used on the Canal line at that moment in the barn. The doors to the service bays to the left in the photo are closed.
Perley A. Thomas streetcar 932, outbound on N. Carrollton, heading to Beauregard Circle. We've had some gorgeous afternoons this Autumn, perfect days for hopping on a streetcar and going out to City Park.
Note that the rollsign on 932 is empty. The rollsigns for the operating 900-series streetcars are as they were when they were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. That means they only have "St. Charles" and "Special," since all the other streetcar lines had been discontinued at that time.
The arch-roof architecture of the 900s dates to 1915, when the 400-series cars designed for Southern Car Company by Mr. Thomas hit the streets of New Orleans. This distinctive design continues to this day, with not only the 900-series but also the 400-series Riverfront and 2000-series Von Dullens.
The owner of a lovely St. Charles Avenue house wants to demolish it to make way for a 4-story condo development. The location is 5428 St. Charles.
This is the existing house:
The owner has requested a zoning change to RM-4, the least restrictive zoning classification, so he can demolish this home and build this:
More info from the Preservation Resource Center:
Councilmember Midura Announces Community Meeting to Discuss Proposed Condo Project at 5428 St. Charles Av --
Councilmember Midura will be holding a community meeting on November 8th beginning at 6pm at the St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church.
The purpose of this community meeting is to see a presentation of the proposed project and to take public comment on it in advance of it coming before City Council.
Please join Councilmember Midura at this very important event.
WHAT: District A Community Meeting on 5428 St. Charles Av.
WHEN: Thursday , November 8th 2007 from 6-7:30pm
WHERE: St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church
1545 State St
New Orleans , LA 70118
