Picture 1-0.7.

A horsecar from one of the lines that served Audubon Park in New Orleans, apparently sold for a second career across Lake Pontchartrain around Abita Springs.  The picture comes from a printed card with the caption, “Car between Abita Springs and Three Rivers”.  It is not clear that the car actually performed this service: not only is the horse or mule motive power absent, but there is also no sign of track under the car.  The car is the bob-tail design, meaning that passenger entrance and exit was via a single door in the center of the trailing end of the car (at our left), reached from the middle of the track.  This type of car was single-end, and had to be reversed (typically on a turntable) at each end of the route.  The roof is called a Bombay roof, and features a line of small windows for ventilation (the dark area just below the Audubon Park sign).  This design was universally used by New Orleans horsecar companies.  The man in the driver's position, at the right, has his hand on the brake handle.  The windows can open, and at least two of them seem to be equipped with shades of a slat design.

The reference to Three Rivers appears to refer to a river junction just south of Covington, Louisiana, where the Bogue Falaya converges with the Tchefuncte River.  Just upstream of that point, the Abita River also converges with the Bogue Falaya.  Today, Interstate 12 crosses the merged rivers immediately south of the junction.

Horsecar-AudubonPark-AbitaSprings.jpg

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