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I'd noticed some mention of the Lake Charles bridge in an earlier post. If interested in the history of the Lake Charles area rails, here are the 3 stages of my investigation plus some added stuff concerning the bridge. It took me 30 minutes to find it so I know no one else has. LOL.
These are my first and second rides over there on this mission. It, after getting to Iowa Junction, takes you south and then west into Lake Charles. I was totally lost but I found stuff, which later investigated, turned out to be gold by my standards. (anything I find is priceless LOL. My garage attests to that.)
This is so good your next vacation will be in Lake Charles. I promise. More later, Steve
George Harris Member # 2077
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Iowa Jct. originally was teh crossing of two straight railroad. The Southern Pacific running almost due west-east, and the Missouri Pacific runnign approximately southwest-northeast. Up until 1962 or thereabouts, the MoPac had one passenger train, a section of the Texas Eagle that joined the main train at Little Rock. The MoPac line was signaled north of Kinder where it crossed MoPac's Gulf Coast Lines main between Baton Rouge and Houston, but had no signals south of that point. After passenger service into Lake Charles ended the speed limit south of Kinder declined to 25 mph. Conditions remained essentially unchanged after the UP takeover of MP in 1982. Upon takeover of the SP by UP, they were required to sell the SP line east of Iowa Jct. to BNSF. Also, since SP and UP were now the same company, there was no need to have two lines into Lake Charles from iowa Jct. Since the SP line was shorter, straighter, and in better condition, it probably took all of five seconds to decide which of the two lines to keep. Since the line east was now owned by BNSF it also became desirable for UP to get as much traffic as possible off of it. Additionally, this gave the trains direct access to Livonia Yard. Somewhere in this time frame, the arrangement at Iowa Jct was revised to set the line west directly into teh curve for the Iowa Jct. Wye and the line to the east as the diverging side of the turnout. Also, the Kinder to Iowa Jct. line was upgraded from 25 mph to 49 mph. Still no signals.
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