We called it the mail train. Because it was, one or two coaches behind lots of head end cars.
I’ll never forget the finely tuned dance and workaday drama of the handling of No. 5’s mail at the New Iberia depot. Before the train arrived at 2:12, old-fashioned baggage carts with big spoked steel wheels, some loaded with canvas mail bags and some empty, would be rolled out alongside the track, under the long passenger umbrella shed that is no longer there today. Somehow the agent always got the cart within an inch or two of where the engine would pass.
You’d hear No. 5’s readily identifiable smooth distinctive 5-chime air horn faintly float in on the wind from the east. On days at home we could hear its approach from the house as well. After interminable moments you’d hear it again, louder now, and you’d finally see the mars light swing into view around the curve at Center Street and enter the paved-over street trackage of Washington Avenue, invariably right on time, rolling beneath the ancient oaks, passing the parish courthouse where ten years earlier the 5-year-old me had watched Mikados stomping and squalling past with westbound freights.
As the train crossed Jefferson Street and negotiated a gentle S curve right before reaching the platform, you’d invariably see that the engine was a single Alco PA unit, classically running out its last miles on a plug mail run, although we didn’t know that. The PA would majestically roll past, slowing, with cadenced bell ringing. A classic head end consist followed, heavyweight baggage cars with very cool express reefers and boxcars mixed in, steam hissing from between the cars.
As the railway post office cars smoothly glided by, you’d see the doors already opened with a clerk standing in the door, and others visible behind the barred windows. Somehow the train always stopped with the open door right at the perfectly placed baggage wagon. With precision smoother than any fine classical ballet, the inbound mail would quickly be stacked on the wagon, rolled away, and immediately replaced by the cart loaded with outbound mail. Just as quickly, the loaded canvas mail bags disappeared into the car.
The clerk would signal to the conductor that the mail transfer was complete. In the steam engine days, the engine would have completed water top off at the water column at the west end of the platform. Since the few outbound passengers had already boarded the train, the conductor gave the highball to the hogger. Two airhorn shorts signaled the almost imperceptible start of the train. Crossing signals sounded for Corrine Street, then Hopkins Street. The rear end red mars light, suspended from the accordion gate in the doorway of the rearmost car, slowly disappeared around the long gentle curve to the west, passing the barely visible West Tower on its way out, and following the complex pole lines on their westward march.
With the dramatic intensity winding down as the airhorn of No. 5 faded to the west, the carts with the loaded mail bags were rolled to a waiting postal vehicle and the bags loaded for the ride to the post office. But, like a hidden bonus track on a record, one last dramatic detail remained. No.2 eastbound, the Sunset Limited, was due at 2:37. This train didn’t stop in New Iberia at the time. The depot agent walked down to the east end of the platform and hung an outbound mailbag on a mail crane. No. 2, on the end of its run from the west coast, would often be late but when it was on time you’d hear the airhorn to the west, where No. 5 had gone into the hole (“siding”) for the meet, and you’d watch the train regally roll in behind MU’d EMD FP units that always handled the train, the bell majestically clanging a slow tempo. The mailbag would be snagged onboard by the RPO, ending the daily drama of the US Mail coming and going from New Iberia Louisiana.
Oh what a time to be a young railfan there. We didn’t know what we had until it was gone, No. 5 making its last run in late 1963.