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LIFE

Atchafalaya Voices: the Walter J. Donlon story

William Thibodeaux

March 16, 1927, started out as any ordinary spring morning for the crew of Southern Pacific’s local freight train 57. However, that quickly changed when its conductor was struck and killed by an oncoming passenger train. How could this happen, everyone wanted to know. A local newspaper reported that “SP Railroad Conductor Walter J. Donlon of Lafayette had stepped from his train in the yards at Rayne and was signaling the other members of the crew of the train which was on a curved section of the track.” The article continued with “his back being turned toward #6 (passenger train), he failed to notice its approach.” Donlon sustained a fractured skull and died instantly after being struck by the locomotive and thrown from the railroad. His body was loaded onto passenger train 6 and taken to Lafayette.

Earlier that morning SP local 57 was called to leave Lafayette at 6 a.m. and had left sometime after his call time. The local headed west to Rayne some 15 miles away. Once there, they cleared the main track and entered one of the yard tracks in Rayne. According to Southern Pacific Time Table 61, which took effect November 12, 1922, passenger train 6 was scheduled to depart Rayne at 9:39 a.m. The fatal accident happened at 9:50 a.m.

Nowhere in the article did it mention the exact mile post location where the accident occurred, nor did it name the track where Donlon’s train had cleared earlier while waiting for the passenger train. Why was Donlon so close to the main track, especially because he knew a train was fast approaching? The track speed back then was 55 mph. Donlon was not a new hire; he had been around trains and railroads for nearly two decades prior to the accident. Donlon had been employed by the railroad since 1911, and he had celebrated his 40th birthday just two months earlier. He was the assigned conductor on 57 local at that time; however, he held the position of brakeman at other times.

Donlon was survived by his wife and three children — two boys and a girl. The children were Walter J. Jr., Louis and Genevieve. He was also survived by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ben Donlon, four sisters, Mrs. Frank Doerr, Mrs. B. C. Grunewald, and Miss Rhena Donlon, all of Lafayette, and Mrs. D. A. Ritchey of Jackson, Mississippi, and one brother, Mike Donlon, a well-known insurance and real estate man and also president of the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce. Funeral services were held the following day at 3 p.m. at St. John’s Cathedral in Lafayette. The church was packed with family and friends in attendance along with a large group of members from the Order of Railway Conductors and Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, of which Mr. Donlon had been a member for a number of years.

It’s gone today but back when this unfortunate accident happened, the depot in Rayne was a viable train order station. According to the old timetable, the depot in Rayne had a telegraph operator that remained on duty from 12:01 a.m. to 8 a.m. and again from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. six days a week — closed on Sundays. The Rayne depot was located at mile post 160, which is the distance from where the rail line originated — Algiers, across the river from New Orleans. Originally, it was the New Orleans, Opelousas & Great Western Railroad.