Thursday, March 27, 2014

The "Mastodon" Railway Barge



The Mastodon was a Southern Pacific Railway barge that ferried trains and passengers across the Mississippi River at Avondale, ten miles above New Orleans, Louisiana. The postcard above was sent from NewOrleans in January 1913. The message on the back mentions getting fat from eating so many bananas which were sold for the price of 2 dozen for 5 cents there.



Below is another postcard of the Mastodon about 20 years later, but looking much the same. It was necessary to ferry the trains across the river until the Huey P. Long Bridge was built in 1935.



For More Vintage Images

sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2014/03/sepia-saturday-221-29-march-2014.html


17 comments:

  1. The name of the ferry is certainly appropriate! That's one big boat. I imagine it took a lot of finagling by both pilot & tugboats to get the barge lined up just right to take on & deposit the trains.

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  2. Ferrying trains. Well.well. Now I've seen everything.. I think we'll be seeing quite a few barges, ferries, punts, bridges this week. The river looks very peaceful when those photos were taken.

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  3. Nice postcards, postcards can be so historical! Imagine 2 pounds of bananas for five cents!!

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  4. You must have a well organised catalogue for your post cards, or have you got them all committed to memory?

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  5. They are organized, but that doesn't mean I can always remember or find them. I rejected two options as too boring for Sepia Saturday this week. I finally remembered the railway barge after wasting time on the other potential topics.

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  6. Wonder how many bananas 2 lbs is. Must have been quite something to ferry those trains across.

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  7. I've read about train ferries but have never seen one before since they are now obsolete. The word "Mastodon" was adopted from the name of a prehistoric ancestor of the elephant, but it was used as an adjective, along with "Mammoth" in many 19th century names for stores, buildings, and even minstrel bands. There must have been a fad of applying it to anything humongous and large.

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  8. It is enormous. I saw a TV programme this week which referred to the mastodon being so much more interesting that the very ordinary mammoth.

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  9. Wow! I learn so much in Sepia Saturday and now I know about train ferries.

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  10. Wonderful. Old postcards really are a perfect guide to fascinating history.

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  11. Very interesting. We travelled on a train ferry in Scandinavia in 1976, when we had a Eurail pass and trained through numerous countries.

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  12. Super interesting postcards, because those ferries aren't around here any more. The muddy Miss is sort of, constrained between dikes which have changed the river's true nature...in another hundred years I wonder what will happen to it...paved over?

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  13. Imagine that -- a train ferry! And it floated!! I can't even wrap my brain around that one.

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  14. That would be an exciting train trip.

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  15. Here inlower MN near the Mississippi we await the fiorst barge sighting whether moving up or down river, most of the ice is disappearing and a barge is the first sign of spring. Most are hauling I don't know what, fuels, grains, etc but have not seen a train ever transported before. Great postcard/

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  16. That first postcard so beautifully fits this theme...sepia sky and all...

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