Two photos of busy outbound Canal cars filled with riders one morning in 1953.  The upper photo shows car 938 followed a block back by 931.  This picture was taken in the block between Royal/St. Charles (ahead) and Bourbon/Carondelet (behind the photographer), looking in toward the river and across to the uptown side.  The outer track in the foreground had been used by the Desire and Gentilly lines, but those had been converted to bus in 1948.  In the 1929 rebuilding, this block had been given a four-track crossover, but some time before 1948, it was converted to a simple crossover between the two inner tracks.  In the foreground of this picture, we see a remnant of the original crossover, but the switch now leads nowhere.  In fact, a close look reveals that the frog (the place where two rails cross) has been welded over to make the straight-through rail solid.

The second photo shows car 937, equally filled with riders, about a block away, between Bourbon/Carondelet and Dauphine/Baronne, from a similar point of view.  In the background, a group of workmen are just deploying their equipment from their truck, parked over the unused outer track, to begin some maintenance project on the neutral ground.