I came across this link today.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/inde ... xml&coll=1

That's the first reference I've seen to possible establishment of a New Orleans streetcar museum. I wonder where its site would be and what type of exhibits it would house.

Sloan

As someone who works on occasion with the Baltimore Streetcar Museum, located in the flood-prone Jones Falls Valley, I would strongly suggest that they look to locate said museum outside of a flood plain.

Hmmmm...............

Maybe Lafayette? Shreveport? <:-/

Having lived in New Orleans twice, 1958-64, and 1968-73, and been involved in attempting to establish a railroad museum there, I cannot envision what would be the focus of a New Orleans streetcar museum. There are two "old" streetcars, Ford, Bacon & Davis No. 29, which was used by NOPSI as a work car into the 1970's, and Brill No. 453, used as a stationary training device until placed in the French Market as "The Streetcar Named Desire" in the 1970's. New Orleans' most modern cars were used on the St. Claude line, and they were all scrapped when it was converted to trackless trolley in the early 1950's. Everything else used the 800 and 900 series cars, which are in museums all over the country. From the outside, both series were identical. There aren't even any chicken coops left of any earlier car types, except for the two cited above.

I found it amusing that I fought tooth and nail to keep the cars on Canal Street when they were removed and two decades later they were put back. Too bad the city wasn't smart enough to put the new cars in the Carrollton barn - it escaped flooding. Streetcar service was restored within hours of a disastrous fire in Baltimore, and the same was true in the two cities hit with nuclear weapons, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It shouldn't take almost three years to restore the St. Charles line in New Orleans...

Not all of New Orleans flooded during Katrina. In fact, according to a story I read, the ORIGINAL city limits mostly survived flooding. Perhaps the Carrollton barn is in that area.

Les