| The Santa Fe only owned 63.5 miles of track in Louisiana and this is the only photo I ever took of an ATSF train on this trackage. This local had originated in Silsbee, Texas the previous day and worked its way 72 miles here to DeRidder, where the crew tied up. At 6:55 A.M. I found the train just as the crew had left it the previous evening, facing east just west of the KCS crossing.This branch was constructed by the Jasper & Eastern -- a subsidiary of the Gulf Colorado & Santa Fe -- between 1905 and 1908. The CG&SF was chartered in 1873 and was unrelated to the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe until 1884, when it became a subsidiary of the AT&SF. The GC&SF incorporated the J&E in 1904 to build eastward from its Silsbee-Longview route at Kirbyville, Texas. Construction began in Kirbyville in 1905 and was completed to Oakdale (milepost 80.8) on 9 February 1908. Throughout its history, the lifeblood of this line had been forest products: timber, lumber, crossties, naval stores, pulpwood and paper. In later years, all of the J&E's connections were with other Class I railroads: the Missouri Pacific at Bleakwood, Texas; the Kansas City Southern and the Southern Pacific at DeRidder, and the Missouri Pacific at Oakdale; but during the heyday of logging in southwest Louisiana, the J&E connected with at least a half dozen rail lines which were owned by lumber companies. In later years, the line's customers included a lumber mill and a chemical plant in Oakdale, a paper mill at Elizabeth, and a turpentine distillery, a wood treatment plant, an aggregate distributor, and a paper mill at DeRidder. Pulpwood was loaded at Pitkin and crossties at Merryville.The J&E was absorbed into the GC&SF in 1948, and the GC&SF itself was absorbed into the AT&SF in 1965. The easternmost 40 miles of the branch -- from DeRidder to Oakdale -- was abandoned on 28 April 1986. On 31 December 1997 the Santa Fe merged with the Burlington Northern to form the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, and in June 1998 BNSF sold the remaining part of the line to the Timber Rock Railroad, a new subsidiary of Watco. |