Louisiana Locations

I don't even know your name
But I love you just the same
If you let me hold your hand
Then I think maybe I can make you understand

So begins the blues hit Please Accept My Love, written by Gibsland native Jimmy Wilson in 1958 and later recorded by the legendary B.B. King. I have my own love affair with Wilson's stomping grounds — its diamond, particularly. If you've been there yourself at just the right time, felt the rumble and heard the strain, I think maybe I can make you understand.

My first visit to Gibsland was my father's second. He had been there in the 1970s, when the Louisiana & North West was fully invested in running shortline trains through the piney woods with covered wagon F units that had once plied the West Coast pulling named passenger trains. Tiny Gibsland, Louisiana: an veritable F unit museum back in the day. By the time we arrived at the diamond town together, in the summer of 1989, most of the F's were rusting away on a house track out behind the L&NW enginehouse and a handful of Geeps now served the road to McNeil. Although we caught some shortline action that day — when the L&NW came back into town from the north and dissected its train for interchange — the old Illinois Central mainline was disappointingly quiet. Fours years later, however, I'd be back to Gibsland to see gray MidSouth units many times over. A summer job in Minden, Louisiana, afforded me several sunny afternoons to see the diamond come alive for what local railfans called the "Gibsland Shuffle."

And a shuffle it was. Think north Louisiana in July: Summer heat. Bugs chirping noisily in the nearby woods. Rails popping and settling in the hot sun. The occasional automobile thumping over the dirt crossings. The sleepy little railroad village. Then, outside of town, a MidSouth leader would blow for a crossing and make preparations for a stop at the diamond. In our craft, feel feelings beat the sense of satisfaction (and relief) that the effort to get to The Spot will in fact be rewarded by the arrival of a locomotive and its duties.

Of course, MidSouth was only the current keeper of the Gibsland ritual: Illinois Central and then the Gulf that followed also kept this place busy in their day, given that the L&NW and the North Louisiana & Gulf both claimed this little town in Bienville Parish as a shortline terminus. Three railroads sharing one diamond. That makes for good railfanning in any era. My years visiting Gibsland predated all the upgrades Kansas City Southern would pay for to build out its multi-million dollar Meridian Speedway. As such, the triple interchange at Gibsland in my time was guarded much like it likely was 75 years before, not with illuminated signals or satellite circuits, but with a giant swinging metal gate painted silver and bedecked with stop signs. Crews that called on Gibsland from any of the three railroads would dismount their power to swing said gate into the necessary position to permit the crossing of the diamond. Even in 1993, after the KCS had already begun to make its presence known on the mainline, MidSouth crews were still stopping at the gate to get paper orders out of the official mailbox mounted near the tracks. Old school all the way.

Train stopped, orders read, and then round one of the Shuffle would begin. MidSouth crews would drop off and pick up long cuts of cars from either the big mill in Hodge (via the NL&G) or from Homer or McNeil to the north (on the L&NW). Watching it all unfold — sometimes it took hours — there never seemed to be enough sidings at Gibsland to swallow everything that needed to be set out and picked. Yet the work was always done. Eventually, rounds two and three of the Shuffle kicked off when L&NW and NL&G trains also made their daily respective appearances. More long cuts. More switching. More prime movers rumbling over and around the diamond. There seemed to me to be an inverse correlation between the amount of traffic needing interchange and the footprint of the physical plant, not to mention the quality of the rail.

Indeed, one of my favorite memories of this era was standing on the south side of the diamond watching the MidLouisiana Rail (what MidSouth called the old NL&G upon purchase) drag what must have been 50 cars over the diamond and around one of the several interchange tracks, straining west alongside the Shreveport main. Between the diamond and the mainline on that side, the connecting track sagged down through a low spot in the land. Seeing all those paper mill boxcars rock and roll down through that sag, and hearing those first gen 567 movers pulling hard on the front and making silver strong smoke ... meanwhile knowing that the end of their train was still coming up the hill into Gibsland, behind me — well, if you can sense that scene, "then I think maybe I can make you understand" why I still love that place so much.