Amtrak Mardi Gras Line: The Inaugural Run

Storyboard
Written By Ellis Anderson
 August 2025

The new Mardi Gras line between New Orleans and Mobile was thirty years in the making, so every city on the route celebrated the inaugural run on August 16th Gulf Coast style - starting in the Crescent City.

- photos by Ellis Anderson

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This photo gallery is underwritten in part by the Mardi Gras Museum of Costumes and Culture

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Passengers started arriving pre-dawn at the Union Passenger Terminal

Passengers started arriving pre-dawn at the Union Passenger Terminal

Ellis Anderson

Ellis Anderson first came to the French Quarter in 1978 as a young musician and writer.  Eventually, she also became a silversmith and represented local artists as owner of Quarter Moon Gallery, with locations in the Quarter and Bay St. Louis, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  

Her book about the Bay's Katrina experience, Under Surge, Under Siege, was published by University Press of Mississippi and won several awards, including the Eudora Welty Book Prize in 2010 and the Mississippi Library Association's Nonfiction Author's Award for 2011.  Under Surge, Under Siege was also short-listed as nonfiction finalist for the 2012 William Saroyan International Book Prize, Stanford University Libraries.

 In 2011, Anderson founded her first digital publication, the Shoofly Magazine and served as publisher from 2011 - 2022.  She established French Quarter Journal in 2019, where she currently serves as publisher and managing editor.

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