In a way, the rail scene in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast has come full circle, within a few days of the 20th anniversary of one of the worst disasters in the history of the region. On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near the Mississippi-Louisiana border on the Gulf Coast. It was one of the most deadly and costly storms in history, causing an estimated death toll of 1,392 persons (including many New Orleanians) and costing $125 billion 2005 dollars. Much of the Crescent City and the towns along the coast were flooded. The mayor of Waveland, Mississippi, west of Bay St. Louis (which is now a stop on Amtrak’s Mardi Gras Service trains) told National Public Radio that 90% of the town’s buildings were severely damaged or destroyed. New Orleans itself would have survived the storm with less damage than it sustained, if a levee had not failed. Because it did, most houses in the Lower Ninth Ward were destroyed. Many New Orleanians were missing after the storm, including musicians Pete Fountain and Fats Domino, both of whom later resurfaced. Others suffered together in the Superdome, which was the shelter of last resort. Non-motorists, who comprise a sizable percentage of the city’s population, were particularly hard-hit, due to a lack of means of escape.
Katrina affected the rail scene, too. Amtrak service was suspended as the storm approached. So was transit in the Crescent City, including the legendary streetcars that ran on St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street. Eventually the streetcar lines came back, and the system is now bigger than it was at the time.
Streetcar suspension and recovery
Katrina knocked out all streetcar service. That included the historic St. Charles Avenue line (which started as a horsecar line in 1835 and was electrified in 1893), the recently restored Canal Street line (1861-1964 and 2004-present), and the Riverfront Line, which had opened for service in 1988.
The St. Charles Avenue line was refurbished after the storm, which included replacing wire that had blown down. Service was restored in phases, beginning with buses in October 2005. As streetcar service was restored, it started as a loop in the city’s Central Business District with street-running track on Carondolet Street and St. Charles Avenue, and along one block of Canal Street (the only block that hosted streetcars continuously) and using a tail track on Howard Avenue near the former Lee Circle for turnarounds. That service began on Dec. 19, 2006. The line was extended to Napoleon Avenue on Nov. 10, 2007, and on the rest of St. Charles Avenue on Dec. 23. The far end of the line, along Carrollton Avenue, reopened on June 22, 2008—nearly three years after the storm.
Part of the Canal Street line came back in December 2005, even though the Mid-City car barn flooded severely, damaging all of the cars that were stored there. Reports from the time indicated that water was five feet deep and reached above the tops of the fareboxes, but the cars were eventually repaired and returned to service, beginning in 2009. Brookville Equipment Corp. repaired the trucks, motors and electrical equipment, while other work was performed at the historic Carrollton Barn in the Riverbend neighborhood, which did not flood. Cars from the St. Charles Avenue line, which had been stored at Carrollton, ran again on Canal Street during the recovery period. Brookville Equipment Corp. repaired the trucks, motors and electrical equipment, while other work was performed at the Carrollton Barn.
The Riverfront Line came back on Dec. 22, 2007. A line between the Union Passenger Terminal (UPT) along Loyola Avenue, and along Rampart Street and St. Claude Avenues on the other side of Canal Street, opened for service in 2016. Those lines, or parts of them, have come and gone since then. Still, the streetcar system not only recovered from the storm’s knockout blow but has grown since then.
Some Amtrak trains came back too
For about six weeks, through September and early October, there were no trains running to or from New Orleans, as rail lines surrounding the city were repaired. The trainless Union Passenger Terminal was used as a temporary jail in early September, as reported by KOMO-TV on Sept. 6. Eventually the rail lines were returned to service, and the passenger trains came back. The trains from New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles were cut back to terminating at Atlanta, Memphis, and San Antonio. They later resumed operation into New Orleans. The City of New Orleans was first extended to Hammond, Louisiana (about one hour north of New Orleans) and returned to the Crescent City on Oct. 8, 2005. The Crescent train from New York returned the next day, after temporarily terminating at Meridian, Miss. The Sunset Limited returned to New Orleans later in October.
The Gulf Coast segment of the Sunset Limited, which had been part of a transcontinental operation between Los Angeles and Florida since 1993, did not. While the tracks were repaired by January 2006 according to a Jan. 26 report by Gary Holland in Biloxi’s Sun Herald, the tri-weekly service that had run for the previous 12 years did not come back. Amtrak officially listed the route between the Crescent City and Jacksonville (the train actually ran to Orlando for most of its 12-year incarnation and briefly ran all the way to Miami, but that mileage was served by New York trains) as “suspended.” East of Mobile, it still is, and it appears unlikely that passenger service will return to that part of the line.
Still, there are trains running along the Mississippi Gulf Coast to Mobile again, after a 20-year absence. It took the “Second Battle of Mobile,” which we have covered for years, to get that service back, but the trains are running.
The streetcar network in New Orleans is running, too, and is still considered an icon of the city. The legendary Perley E. Thomas cars that made their debut in 1923 are still running every day, to the delight of locals and tourists alike. So are the red cars with yellow trim designed by streetcar legend Elmer VonDullen. It was only shortly before Katrina struck that streetcar service returned to Canal Street after an absence of nearly 40 years.
New Orleans has lost some of its pre-Katrina population, but it remains an active and vibrant city, with strong civic pride and a uniqueness that tourists still can’t resist sampling. As Amtrak and transit everywhere in the U.S. generally face new and possibly unprecedented challenges, New Orleans appears ready to meet them. Time will tell if the city succeeds in that endeavor, as well as how long Amtrak trains will continue to serve it.
