Feature Photo: October 2007 Archives

The sign out front of Canal Station in 1963, just nine months before the Canal streetcar line was "converted" to bus service. The photographer was standing in front of the Canal Station streetcar barn building. Behind the sign is a bus parking lot on the site of the old Kemster Athletic Field. NOPSI acquired the ballpark from NORD in the 1940s. It was cleared and paved over for bus storage. The building in the background is Warren Easton High School, across N. Gayoso from the bus lot.

Note the GM "Old Looks" buses in their maroon and cream NOPSI livery behind the sign. Some of these buses remained in service as late as 1979, operating on lines such as Cartier, which existed primarily as service for students of John F. Kennedy Senior High on Wisner Blvd.

For more details on Canal Station, the A. Philip Randolph SIS facility that replaced it, and the new Canal Barn, check out our new Canal Station section.

Photo courtesy H. George Friedman, Jr. and his fantastic site, "Canal Street: A Street Railway Spectacular."

Von Dullen streetcars 2011 and 2020, along with a bus on the West End line at the Cemeteries Terminal. 2011 is on the single-track stub at the end of the line. When 2011 is ready to depart, the operator will flip the traffic signal to stop autos turning onto Canal from City Park Avenue. 2011 will then switch onto the inbound track and 2020 will be able to pull into the stub track.

Riders coming in from Lakeview on the West End bus line must cross into the Canal Street neutral ground to continue downtown on the streetcar. Keep in mind that Canal street is three lanes wide here, and there is a lot of traffic coming in both directions. There are no "don't walk" signs to safeguard riders who are transferring.

The family walking towards 2020 at the right of this photo is one of the main reasons most of the objections to the various proposals for an new streetcar terminal in this area ring hollow. There is no way those kids should be walking that close to automobile drivers who are preparing to make the left turn onto City Park Avenue to reach points west.

The red Von Dullen streetcars shown in this photo are currently undergoing repairs to replace parts damaged by flooding in the storm. They'll still be a year or two coming back to Canal Street. In the meantime, the 900-series streetcars continue to get riders from downtown to the Cemeteries.

clicky image for larger version

Peley A. Thomas streetcar 866, on Tulane at S. Carrollton Avenue. The direction and roll sign indicate that 866 is running on the Tulane Belt line. The railroad grade crossing gates and the switch tower in the neutral ground are for the tracks leading into the Illinois Central's Union Station at Loyola Avenue. There was a small station at Carrollton Avenue so Uptown passengers could board or leave trains without having to go all the way downtown. (Union Station was torn down in the 1950s to make way for the Union Passenger Terminal complex.) NOPSI 866 ran on various lines in the city, including Canal and St. Charles, until the Canal line's discontinuance in 1964, when it was scrapped.

The stadium in the background is Pelican Stadium, home of the New Orleans Pelicans from 1915 to 1957, when it was demolished. The Pelicans played two seasons at Tad Gormley Stadium in City Park, before the team shut down in 1959. The "Pelicans" name was used again briefly in the 1970s, when the city had a AAA team playing in Da Dome, but that venture failed. The current AAA team for the city is the New Orleans Zephyrs. They kept that name when the team moved from Denver. Because the wooden roller coaster at Pontchartrain Beach was named the "Zephyr," the name stuck.

Pelican Stadium was also home to the "New Orleans Black Pelicans" of the Negro League. For more information on baseball in New Orleans, check out www.neworleansbaseball.com, by S. Derby Gisclair, who has written two books for Arcadia on the subject. (Arcadia was my publisher for the Canal streetcar book.)

This part of New Orleans was still referred to as "back of town" by many, as Mid-City was still a developing neighborhood. Now, Mid-City is a neighborhood in recovery, still working through the aftermath of the storm.

Street railway preservation gets a permanent and organized voice in New Orleans starting this month, in the form of the New Orleans Street Railway Association (NOSRA). The mission of NOSRA is similar to that of Market Street Railway in San Francisco, specifically to support NORTA as a nonprofit organization in developing/promoting streetcar education and preservation. The basic framework for the organization was worked out prior to the storm, but that event was a bit of a speed bump in the process. Things are now back on track for us on a personal level, so it's time to get this project going.

NOSRA is about working with NORTA, we can't make this any plainer. An analysis of other streetcar-related efforts shows that most of those efforts were really just ad-hoc, single-purpose groups. Once the particular purpose had passed, there wasn't anything to sustain the organization. Another problem is that some folks, while well-intentioned, don't realize that they have to do business with an existing governmental entity (NORTA) to make any streetcar effort work. This means building and nurturing relationships with TMSEL/NORTA, the ATU, as well as city and state government.

We're dead serious about this. On a personal level, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I'm suspending my computer consulting and training practice and working as NOSRA's president/director full-time. Obviously I can't do this alone, so we've appointed a board of directors, and are in the process of forming an advisory committee. The "virtual" advisors have already signed in and started work, in our Forums on the website, www.nosra.org. Check out our formal mission statement, and our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document.

In keeping with our mission of supporting NORTA, we're keeping our goals realistic. First, get NOSRA functioning in an office on or near one of our streetcar lines. Second, begin the process of applying for grants to develop educational materials for K-12 social studies classes on streetcars, public transit, and the history of street railways. Third, begin fund raising to come up with the money that NORTA will need to restore streetcars 453 (the Brill semi-convertible), and 460 (Perly A. Thomas ex-NOPSI 919).

There's often talk about establishing a "streetcar museum" in the city. This is one of NOSRA's long-term goals, but we're keeping this project realistic and workable. It took Market Street Railway thirty years to get to the point where they were in a financial position to do both restoration work and open a museum facility. It's going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore the existing streetcars, much less build a museum. We'll get there in the long run, but the best way to get any nonprofit moving is to set reasonable expectations and goals in the beginning. But don't worry, we like to dream, too.

Since we're a startup nonprofit, we're broke, of course. Any assistance you can offer is appreciated. Specifically, we're asking streetcar fans to donate $10 to NOSRA to get things started. We'll set up our membership structure and start soliciting individual and corporate memberships when our corporation papers get back from Baton Rouge and we set up our financial system.

It's going to be an exciting fall for streetcar fans in New Orleans. We encourage everyone with an interest in streetcar education and preservation to contact us and work with NOSRA to make the organization a success.