Tferk, this 1968 engine 133 plunge was at a hand-cranked (by the train crew) E35 swing bridge across Bayou Teche at either Charenton or Oaklawn on the Iberia, St. Mary & Eastern extension of the former New Iberia & Northern, an obscure south Louisiana branch line. It was 65 lb. rail or lighter on sand ballast. I never saw a train on that line go more than 10 or 15 mph. I’ve heard speculation that the engine crew fell asleep. That train would have been there between 9 and 11 in the morning. It would have earlier passed my old high school like I mentioned in the GP18 post. That engine certainly just gently tipped down into the water after balancing on the fuel tank at rails end. It was not a high speed catastrophe, no one died. Although someone’s job certainly died.

Here is a photo of a remaining abutment of the BayouTeche bridge where the “133” accident happened, from another website, along with the non-railfan-commentary that went with it.

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Missouri Pacific railroad bridge.
(Photo by author)
Still in the vicinity of Charenton, Keith and I canoed past a large cement structure [29.881543, -91.521699] on the east bank of the Teche. At first it reminded me of a World War II-era bunker or pillbox, but as we canoed closer I noticed a few wooden crossties atop the structure: it was a piling for a now-abandoned railroad bridge. I thought perhaps it had served a “dummy line,” one of the narrow-gauge railroads that many local sugar plantations used a century ago to carry harvested cane to the mills. At Patoutville [29.903721, -91.729066], for example, Enterprise Plantation — located not too far from the Teche — operated its own dummy line and still possesses three vintage locomotives in storage. (Two other Patoutville locomotives underwent restoration and today transport fun seekers around the Six Flags over Texas amusement park.) I checked an old quad map, however, and found that the bridge in question had belonged to the Missouri Pacific Railroad, whose line over the Teche had long since been ripped up.

I remember the September 1973 T & P wreck at Morley Bridge well. I was working at Dow Chemical at Plaquemine, La at the time. I got the news from my Dad who was Port Director at the Port of Baton Rouge. He had received a call from the T & P superintendent at Addis to inquire if he could make arrangements to have all the damaged equipment move across the Port of Baton Rouge dock. My dad was an old MP guy and under stood well the problem that the Morley Bridge accident presented to the T & P. He worked out a solution for the T & P. Cranes at the crash site lifted the two locomotives and all the cars and loaded them on barges. The barges were then towed to the Port Allen lock and after passing through into the Mississippi River proceeded to the dock at the Port of BR. There the locomotives and cars were again raised by cranes and loaded onto flat cars for movement by the T & P. Years later, (1989), when I transferred to the Dow Railroad Department I remember talking to (by then UP) crews who remembered the wreck. The story I remember was that there had been a power failure early that September morning that affected the movement of the lift bridge and the signals. The bridge was up and the counterweights were down and the bridge tender could not lower the span. The train crashed through the counter weight destroying the locomotives and putting a number of cars into the Intracoastal Canal, as well as killing the two crewmen in the cab of the lead locomotive. The story I got was that one of them was a young guy on his first official run. They also told me that the bridge tender blamed himself and never got over the incident. Looking back I wish I had gone to the port and photographed the equipment being transferred from the barges, up and over the Dock, and on to the flat cars. Would have made a great Eagle article! But a horrible tragedy.

Bill Herbert

I looked at some 2009 on line pictures of the Morley Bridge. Was the bridge rebuilt after the wreck? Or was a new one built?

The reason I asked is that, to me, someone with a background in historic architecture and engineering structures, the bridge in the 2009 photos I saw look like a much older design than a 70s bridge. There are a lot of state highway lift bridges in south Louisiana of very similar design with a set of counterweights on either side that date from at least the early 1950s.