HEART OF LOUISIANA: Addis Train Museum

ADDIS, La. (WAFB) – Since the 1880s, trains have been rolling through the small town of Addis in West Baton Rouge Parish. But for its first few decades, the town had a different name, Baton Rouge Junction.

“It was because to go west, the people from Baton Rouge had to come here to catch the trains,” said Jocelyn Myhand Gauthreaux.

In 1915, Baton Rouge Junction was given a new name.

“And they changed it to Addis because it was too confusing for the people not knowing where Baton Rouge Junction was different from Baton Rouge,” Gauthreaux said.

John Wesley Addis was a superintendent of the Texas and Pacific Railroad.

When I drive around Louisiana, I pass through these small towns and I often wonder why is this town where it is? Why is Addis here?

“Well, it started on the river and it’s here because of the railroad,” said Gauthreaux.

Gauthreaux is one of the volunteers who researched the town’s history, collected artifacts, and opened a museum in a century old bank building. Even the building has a story,

“But only seven years after it was built, it closed because they had the great depression plus a railroad strike,” Gauthreaux said.

The building later served as the post office and a grocery. Ella Thibodaux’s father worked for the local railroad.

“They would inspect the railroad. They would pull off the old ties that needed to be replaced. This had to all be done by hand,” said Thibodaux.

Train stations would have a clock like this, and railroad workers like Thibodaux’s dad would carry a pocket watch.

“Every morning. They had to synchronize that watch with the watch at the depot, and that was so they could get what they called a timetable so they would know when these trains were coming through, they had to get off that track,” Thibodaux said.

You can see an old conductor’s hat, train tickets, a ticket puncher, and items used to serve passengers. There are old telephones before the devices would fit in your pocket. And the old phones replaced the railroad telegraph. Outside the town park has a caboose, something else that railroads no longer use. The museum has a collection from local military veterans, old housewares and clothing, schools that are long gone, and radios that once were the center of family entertainment. It’s quite a collection for a group of volunteers who value their history.

“You might not have a lot of interest now, but down the road, somebody’s gonna wanna know something about their grandparents that they didn’t know. And we wanna preserve all those memories here,” said Thibodaux.

And today. You can still see the railroad activity in front of the Addis museum. The town’s history is still an important part of its future.

More information about the Addis Train Museum can be found on Heart of Louisiana’s website.

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