Louisiana is known as the Pelican State but I'm starting to refer to it as the place railroad locomotives come to die.
A couple of years ago my wife and I traveled through Eunice, Louisiana, I had read that the town was the location where the old Rock Island line interchanged with the Southern Pacific so my keen eye was searching for some possible old railroad items. To my surprise what I saw was an old Santa Fe diesel locomotive sitting in a field. I had to blink a couple of times to make sure I wasn't hallucinating but there it was as plain as day.
What was a Santa Fe locomotive doing in southern Louisiana?
Unfortunately time constraints prevented me from pulling over and investigating but I vowed to come back through town and check things out. Well today was the day that I finally made it back to Eunice and after a little searching I was able to locate the old Santa Fe locomotive.
Here is the information about the locomotive I was able to find online. The unit is a GP-35 that was built in April of 1964 for the former Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad and numbered 1333. The unit was used primarily on trains between Los Angeles and Barstow, California pulling trains over Cajon Pass. Sometime during it's service it was rebuilt as a GP-35u and renumbered 2533. When the Santa Fe and the Burlington Northern merged in the mid 90s the now BNSF continued to use 2533 on trains throughout it's system opting to not the repaint the unit it remained in it's original warbonnet theme.
There is photo evidence of the unit at work for the BNSF up until 2008. Sometime after that 2533 was sold to LTEX (Larry's Trucking & Electronics) which despite what you may think from the name is actually a company out of Ohio that leases railroad equipment. Sometime after that the Acadiana Railroad leased the locomotive from LTEX as used it to switch freight cars in Eunice. According to a local rail fan in 2015 the Acadiana Railroad parked the locomotive were it sits today. This is where things get a little murky. A check of LTEX's roster of locomotives shows that 2533 is no longer in their ownership. It's possible that the Acadiana purchased the locomotive because a post from 2014 stated that the railroad was interested in selling it. Obviously there were no takers because it's still sitting in the same place eight years later.
Either the Acadiana or LTEX abandoned the locomotive and it's sitting just off the road between a house and a recycling center rusting away.
It is my guess that the truth of the matter is that the Acadiana never purchased the locomotive and it still belonged to LTEX. When the unit needed repair LTEX refused to come and get it. The Acadiana had no use for the locomotive anymore so they simply parked it at the end of a siding out of the way. LTEX simply considered 2533 a loss and removed it from it's roster.
Since neither the Acadiana or LTEX claim ownership the ex Santa Fe locomotive is abandoned.
That's what I deduced anyway.
Here is where to find it.
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