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#9855
Charles Duckworth
Participant

Railfan magazine had an article titled ‘Mopac’s Navy’ in November 1982. There were lots of photos and information. Quick search on eBay shows several available for sale.

Here’s a few images with captions.
http://rrpicturearchives.net/archiveThumbs.aspx?id=46538

Unfortunately the captions on the service going to the ICG are incorrect. When the MP filed for abandonment cars were given to Midsouth at Alexandria, Louisiana and they took the cars to Natchez where they were given back to the MP. The MP retained a switch engine and crew to switch International Paper and a couple other industries. The Ste Genevieve barge was in bad shape and needed costly repairs (I recall that the hull was thin in places). The west side incline was abandoned first and a few days later the east incline was abandoned effectively ending the last Mopac ferry operations. Once the Midsouth arrangement was inplace the ferry was scrapped.

Midsouth was purposely not shown on the waybills or in the route as they’d been party to the road haul rates but they received a fix amount for each load and empty moved in both directions.