Folks,As we know all too well the media has, to put it mildly, a lack of interest in railroad preservation. But I was wondereing about the three street car lines in New Orleans.The Perley Thomas cars on the st Charles are the oldest cars in regular service in the United States.the new replica cars that operate on the Canal street line that re-opened last year are classy home built replicas of the older equipment.Anybody heard anything?Ted Miles

Hi Ted;We know the car barn is in the portion of New Orleans that did not flood, so they were not flood damaged. And, while there is some wind damage across the city; is likely the car barn sustained little damage. The lines along St. Charles look to be in decent condition.What we don't know is how they faired during the looting afterwards. Someone mentioned that the shop's forklift was used to break into a store. Hopefully, they are fine. The Riverwalk line runs behind the Convention Center, one of the places were people went gathered after the storm, and where some of the violence took place. I don't know what shape it is in.-James Hefner Hebrews 10:20a Surviving World Steam Project

Not necessarily true.I am only repeating the word of folks at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum who have looked at the flood maps and know exactly where the car barnS are.By their estimate, the one car barn (Carrollton?) was probably under a foot or three of water, while the other one was probably under a couple more feet yet. In short, it ain't looking good.

There are two carbarns, Carrollton and Canal. Below are links to a couple of aerial photos that show the carbarns. The first, of Canal (top center of photo), shows that it is completely flooded, apparently to a depth of at least 3'. There is a row of 2000-series streetcars peeking out from the carbarn:http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/storms/katrina/24427958.jpgThe second photo includes Carrollton (left center of photo) and appears to show it just barely dry. Even the streets surrounding the barn are under water, though, so unless this was a high-water-mark photo Carrollton probably saw a little flooding as well:http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/storms/katrina/24429330.jpgWhat I've gathered from various other accounts is that the Canal line is largely under water; St. Charles is largely dry; and the Riverfront line is dry.

I have been in contact with a surveyor in Louisianna regarding Carrollton shop elevations and feel pretty comfortable that there was only minimal water in that area. The majority of the problems on that end of the line will probably be damage to the overhead wire from all the felled trees in the Garden District.Here is GIS data compiled with Google Map to report current and high water levels. Pick a point on the map to see flood data for that area.http://mapper.cctechnol.com/floodmap.phpIt shows 0 max and 0 current feet of water at the Carrollton carbarn, which may not be completely accurate, since the photo does appear to show some water on the streets (althought the approaches to the doors look dry).I am not sure the cross street of the Canal carbarn, but there was definitely more water out there. I would rather see the new cars get wet than the old ones. Were any of the cars stored at the Canal Street barn historic?Andy Nold, RPLS

Thanks !What we don't know about is vandalism, let's keep our fingers crossedBob H