Just read along. You will not be sorry.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Norman Branch
Prowling the internet has unearthed gold. I'll explain later.
Just read along. You will not be sorry.
Just read along. You will not be sorry.
Sunday, July 9, 2017
NORMAN BR (sm)
This paragraph and map below are additions:
The Gurdon to Norman Branch reached farther north and west than the research below first found. The mill extended the actual tracks The write on the Gurdon to Norman begins below.
The map below explains the above. Starting from the south, the red line is the official Missouri Pacific route, Gurdon to Norman. The mill RR extended the rails to Maudlin. The darker purple line is the connecter between Forester and Mauldin, a true feat. Green is the stretch between Forester and Waldron, aka, the Forester Extention.
All that can be found HERE, a research paper on the Heavener to Forester Branch.
This project was born of an old friend sending a picture of a railroad trestle with folks swimming in the beautiful river below. The picture had a lot "in it" including energy.There was the unknown past and the kinetic present.
After receiving the picture, I kicked the search engines into high gear. I saved one page after another, never reading their full content until my folder was overflowing. At about twelve o'clock last night I shut it down. This morning, before my 10:00 AM curfew on internet play, I had sorted what I'd found. "Assembling a presentation", if no one reads past the first sentence is a win for me. Railroad history is a huge puzzle. One line can have a dozen owners in its past. Where no definitive chronology exists, the work begins. As they say on the railroad, "Here we go".
Consider Smithton to be Gurdon. Consider Pike City to be Antoine.
Below is an 1895 map. It predates the schedule below.
The SWA&IT, 1894, was the Souithwestern Arkansas & Indian Territory RR.
It went out of business and the Iron Mountain's sub purchased it at sale.
It was renamed the Arkansas Southwestern Railway.
.
Below he says, ".....Arkansas Southwestern & Indian Territory Railroad, 1896 .... Delight Division".
"Southwestern Arkansas & Indian Territory Railroad" is on the 1895 map.. And, we know that incorporation by the Iron Mountain (Missouri Pacific sub) did not take place until 1900 at the earliest..
The trip this railroad has taken is stranger than any Grateful Dead song.
The Southwestern Arkansas and Indian Territory Railroad was a railroad in the U.S. state of Arkansas in the late 19th century.[1] The 10-mile-long, 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge line opened in July 1887 as an extension between Smithton and Hebron in Cleveland County, Arkansas. The line was converted to 4 ft 8 1 ⁄ in (1,435 mm) standard gauge in 1891.[1]
I cannot find Hebron. Burtsell is the closest match at 9 miles.
The line was sold at foreclosure on 13 March 1900 after receivership was begun in March 1896, and reorganized on 28 April 1900 as the Arkansas Southwestern Railway Co.
Another clipping:
Caddo River Lumber Company
Caddo River Lumber Company was one of the largest lumber companies operating in the Ouachita Mountains during the first half of the twentieth century. During the Depression, it may have been the largest manufacturing employer in the state. However, like many other lumber companies of the era, it succumbed to a shortsighted policy of non-sustainable practices.
The Caddo River Lumber Company was organized in 1906 by Thomas Whitaker Rosborough, M. R. Smith, W. E. Cooper, and Lee Wilson of Kansas City, Missouri, with Smith as president and Rosborough as vice president, though the latter managed the operations of the company. Rosborough had previously operated sawmills and a planing mill in Arkansas and Louisiana and had done some work for Ozan Lumber Company, which was established by some relatives of his sister’s husband.
Obtaining backing from his Kansas City partners, he sought to establish a sawmill along the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad, settling on a site in Pike County he named Rosboro after himself, though with a simplified spelling.
The sawmill was in place by 1907. He proceeded to purchase land from his in-laws in the Ozan Lumber Company and later purchased more land from Dierks Lumber and Coal Company. The company built a number of railroad spurs into the land it owned for the easy transportation of logs but soon chartered the Caddo and Choctaw Railroad Company, which carried passengers and freight in addition to timber. However, the railroad was never completed all the way to Fort Smith (Sebastian County), as had been planned, but rather stopped at the town of Norman (Montgomery County).
Me: So the Rosboro to Womble / Norman stretch was the C&C RR Co. before it was the Gurdon & Fort Smith. Could this be the explanation why "Fort Smith is in the G&FS's name. It was meant to reach Fort Smith. The C&CR Co. never made it to Fort Smith but its initial target was that town. That railroad would become part of the G&FS which makes me believe its owner and those of the G&FS did a little card playing.
(cont.)
In 1915, the sawmill at Rosboro burned; it was soon rebuilt at double capacity. In 1918, the company acquired 30,000 acres in the Montgomery County area from Graham Lumber Company of St. Louis, Missouri; other acquisitions soon followed, and Caddo River Lumber Company eventually owned timberland and cutting rights across most of northern Montgomery County. The company established a site four miles from Mount Ida (Montgomery County), named Mauldin, to serve as a logging center; after track was laid to Mauldin in 1922, it became a regular logging town. That same year, the company purchased the Glenwood (Pike County) sawmill, town lots, and other buildings from the A. L. Clark Lumber Company. With two double-band mills and large holdings in Montgomery County, Caddo River Lumber Company emerged as the second largest in the Ouachita Mountain area, behind only Dierks.
Rosborough was at ease with African Americans and employed quite a few, but this attitude frequently brought him into conflict with locals, given that many communities in the Ouachita Mountains were “sundown towns”—places where African Americans were forbidden by white residents from living, usually through the threat of violence. At the very beginning of the Caddo River Lumber Company’s operation, Rosborough sought to buy land for a sawmill at Amity (Clark County), but local residents balked at the idea of black people entering their town, and so he chose the site that became Rosboro. Would-be whitecappers once distributed leaflets around Rosboro warning African Americans to leave, to which Rosborough responded by arming his black mill workers for their self-protection. He also installed a high board fence around the black quarters until the threats died down. Waldron (Scott County) and Mount Ida also turned down offers from Rosborough to build sawmills there due to his employment of black workers. Rosborough also experienced difficulties keeping black workers at Mauldin due to local antipathy.
In 1924, M. R. Smith sold his share in the company to Kansas City lumberman William F. Ingham. By the middle of the decade, through purchases both large and small, Caddo River Lumber Company reached into Yell and Scott counties. However, the company greatly limited much of its future profitability by not initiating a sustainability program and selling much of its cutover land to Dierks, which was then planting said land with the expectation of harvesting second-growth trees. By the early 1930s, Dierks and Caddo River were the only lumber companies operating in the Ouachita Mountains. Caddo River established a new sawmill in Scott County at a site named Forester, about twenty miles southeast of Waldron. This expansion drained company resources at a time when the Depression was already hitting hard, though Caddo River managed to maintain a payroll of more than 1,000 people.
In 1936, a disastrous fire in Glenwood burned the sheds and a planing mill there, and they were not rebuilt. The following year, the company finished removing timber in Montgomery County and dismantled the site at Mauldin. At the end of 1937, the Glenwood sawmill was shut down and sold, though after a 1938 fire at Forester destroyed that mill, the company bought it back and transferred it. The expansion of the Ouachita National Forest during this decade allowed Caddo River to sell approximately 200,000 acres of cutover land. Very few people in the company’s leadership were interested in pursuing operations on cutover land, even though Dierks’s sustainability program was demonstrating promise; Dierks also had a policy of converting wood waste into boiler fuel or other products rather than simply burning it. In 1939, the sawmill at Rosboro closed, and some of the equipment was transferred to Oregon, where Rosborough had recently purchased land and established a sawmill. Rosborough sold his interest in the company to Hal Shaffer, who became president. At the time, Caddo River’s only mill was at Forester. On July 17, 1945, Shaffer sold Caddo River’s operations, land, and cutting rights to Dierks Lumber and Coal Company.
For additional information:Balogh, George W. Entrepreneurs in the Lumber Industry: Arkansas, 1881–1963. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995.
Smith, Kenneth L. Sawmill: The Story of Cutting the Last Great Virgin Forest East of the Rockies. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1986.
Understand that the Arkansas Southwestern was to the south connecting Smithton to Pike City, which was just south of Antoine or, they could be the same. It served the same area that was on the 1895 map of the Southwestern Arkansas & Indian Territory. In the Moody's bookkeeping I found, thisouth portion, Smithton to Pike City was not mentioned, the ASR. Only the connector between Gurdon and Simthton and Antoine (Pike City?) and Caddo Gap
.
Trestle on the Delight Division.
While I have the listing above, let me point out that the Delight Division which began at Pike Jct.
and shot eastward..
Lets be done with the Delight Division ...
Several decades after Pike County was formed and almost seventy years after Arkansas became a state, Delight became an incorporated town. The earliest known inhabitants of the area were the Quapaw Indians, a tribe of the great Dakotas who at one time had a population of many thousands. By the latter part of the seventeenth century white people had begun to settle near the banks of Wolf Creek. In fact, so many came that the settlement became known as "Wolf Creek". Some of the earliest settlers of "Wolf Creek" community were the Kirkhams, Kellys, Dixons, Dosses, Carpenters, Dosseys, Mobleys, Wards, Greens, Lambs, Griffins, Clingmans, Wilsons, and Hancocks. On January 18, 1832, a post office was granted to a place called "Wolf Creek," the settlement which was later to become Delight. In the 1833 Territorial Papers of the United States proposals for mail contracts in Arkansas Territory, "Wolf Creek" was named as a mail stop between Little Rock and Hempstead County Courthouse, which was in Washington at that time. The "Wolf Creek" post office was listed again in 1834. The amount of postage from "Wolf Creek's" post office was $13.73 for that year.
On August 21, 1873, Samuel Hasley purchased almost 43 acres of land from the United States for $1.25 an acre. This acreage covers the present site of Delight. A few years later the land was sold to S. B. Dixon and wife, Nancy, who in turn sold it to Abner H. Hancock for $500. On January 4, 1853 he deeded it to David Mobley for the consideration of $700. This land remained in the Mobley family until 1860 when the heirs to David Mobley, then deceased, granted to convey their rights, titles, and interest to William H. Kirkham for the sum of $800.
On December 13, 1895, Southwestern Arkansas, an Indian Territory Railroad Company, paid William H. Kirkham $1.00 for a 100-foot right-of-way and other territory through which their railroad was to be built. As the people of the community learned of the coming of the railroad, excitement grew. The prospects of train service brought new life into the community. A town site was provided and the location of the railroad station was selected. A new town was born, but it must have a name. Since William H. Kirkham, known also as Bill Kirkham, had so generously given the site for the town the city fathers thought he should have the privilege of giving the new town its name. Kirkham said, "This is such a delightful place to live, we shall call the town Delight.". In Pike County Court Record B, page 413, it is found the proceedings of the Incorporation of the town of Delight. It was July 25, 1904, when the petition for incorporation of the town was read before the court and properly filed. All the requirements were met and the petition duly recorded September 9, 1905. John Brock became the first mayor of the new town.
The coming of the new railroad brought new industry to Delight. R.B. F Key was interested in the timber business and he saw in the forests of virgin timber a veritable gold mine. He secured a site and proceeded to build a saw mill and planer. Early on a morning 1897 the whistle sounded and the wheels began to turn. Lumber was shipped far and near on the railroad but it was also used to build new houses for the residents of the Delight. Business boomed and so did Delight. Near the town, large deposits of gravel offered more industry. So carloads of gravel was also shipped over the new railroad. Key built a large hotel to accommodate the drummers who descended on the town to sell their wares to the rapidly expanding business district. Some of the early merchants were A. E. West brook, C. E. Reid, Bose and Jim Bratton, and the Geiser brothers. O. L Mckinney owned and operated the first cold drink stand. As the town grew, a need for a doctor arose. Antoine, a neighboring town 5 miles away, had shared its Dr. Kirkham with the community of Delight for a number of years. So Dr. Rice was the first to become the town's physician in 1903. After Dr. Rice, Dr, Rodgers moved to Delight from Mississippi and practiced medicine for several years. Other Doctors who gave unstintingly of their time were Dr. Walls, Dr. Newt Slaughter, Dr. Joe Thomasson, Dr. W. P. Hemby, and Dr. B. S. Stokes. Dr. Hemby's brother, Hosea, operated a drug store. Ed Brewer became the town's first post master.
About the year 1909 Key sold his saw mill and planer to the Blakely brothers and for six to seven years they continued to operate the mill. But the Forest had been mostly cut over and the saw mill business could no longer be profitable to the owners. So the business was closed and people became interested in other work. Farming was one of the principal occupations with cotton as the leading crop. By 1919 Delight was a very good cotton market. The twenties were very prosperous years. Money was plentiful and credit was easy. When the depression hit in 1930, Delight, like, all other towns and cities across the nation, became paralyzed with fear. But they never gave up hope for a better day. And that day came in 1936, when the Ozan Lumber Company of Prescott began construction of a large saw mill and planer and by January 1937 the wheels of industry began to turn again for the city. new housing projects were completed and for the second time Delight became a thriving mill town.[4]
I tried to find Delight on the mainline of the railroad. It was not there on any of my maps.
Then I backed off and there it was due east of Antoine. The black line depicts the last vestige of
the railroad. I followed the scar to Delight and its Railroad St. I also followed the scar out of town to
where there was some industry, possibly the sawmill. The pictured trestle was off of AR 26.
Yes, the "industry" was the mill.
The "Delight Division" is not mentioned on this early listing, but the depot, Delight, is.
Now for Bobo:
This is the location of some tabernacle. But it is a lead. It is in the Okolona area.
Bobo Road begins at Okoloma and goes north.
It end at where I presume the place to be.
Was there a spur to Bobo or was it on the main line.
Bobo Road crossed the main line but too close to Okoloma to fit
the schedule.
I can't find the spur's scar, so I can't say there was one, wherever Bobo was.
The above is an example of really getting side tracked.
Other routes of the Arkansas Southwestern taken from that 1904 Commission book.
Below is totally redundant.
That old map which was dated 1895 and uses Southwestern Arkansas & Indian Territory fits this description.
The Southwestern Arkansas and Indian Territory Railroad was a railroad in the U.S. state of Arkansas in the late 19th century.[1] The 10-mile-long, 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge line opened in July 1887 as an extension between Smithton and Hebron in Cleveland County, Arkansas. The line was converted to 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge in 1891.[1]
The line was sold at foreclosure on 13 March 1900 after receivership was begun in March 1896, and reorganized on 28 April 1900 as the Arkansas Southwestern Railway
The ASR was what had been built between Smithton and Pike City.
The G&FS had been incorporated in 1900, so had the Arkansas Southwestern according to some.
Now I'm stumped as the ASW has a division called the Gurdon and Fort Smith
and the Gurdon & Ft. Smith had a Northern and "original" section, incorporated at different times.
As mentioned above, there were 2 versions of the G&FS, to make it more exciting.
"Controlled through stock ownership", in the clipping above, refers to "S.L.I.M.&S, below.
Here was a little info gathered from a "memorabilia" website.
GURDON AND FORT SMITH RAILROAD.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern RR.
More clippings. Note the date as being 1906.
Below, Moody's states one end of the description as the Gurdon & Fort Smith near Antoine.
It passes from that point northward though various counties to Womble, aka, Norman. This would be the "Northern G&FS".
Below, Moody covers that little bit between Smithton and Gurdon."1906" is the important date. Both G&FS routes. north & original, had been established.
Again, here are the two G&FS's.
GURDON AND FORT SMITH NORTHERN RAILROAD
Moody's Bonding Co. information.
1) St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Ry
Inc. in AR, March 17, 1905
5.74 mi. Caddo Gap to Womble, AR
(the north section)
2) St. Louis, Iron Moutain and Southern Ry
Inc. in AR, June 11, 1909
35.11 mi. Antoine to Caddo Gap, AR and Gurdon to Smithton, AR (1.24 mi).
Here is the Antoine to Caddo Gap portion mentioned above and that little bit on the Iron Mountain main line between Gurdon and Smithdon. Moody does not mention Smithton to Antoine. Perhaps it was already paid for and since Moody was a bonding entity, that is why it is not mentioned. So, this separation only reflects borrowed money and not complete railroad financial architecture.
So, not being a scholar, not being from Arkansas, and having just landed in this historical mess, I'm going to day that between the SWA&IT, which went belly up, and the Iron Mountain assuming control of the line, 1909, the railroad was named the Gurdon & Fort Smith RR/Rwy.
So how does this work .....
With this? I can only guess that the south portion, Smithton to Pike City was the 1900 "Gurdon to Fort Smith RR". The north part, would have to be the remainder, Glenwood to Womble / Norman or, a lot of lumber mills.
(no I did not miss that the stretch between Pike City, Antoine, and Glenwood, is not accounted for)
Excerpt:
In 1905, plans were announced to extend the Gurdon and Fort Smith line from Glenwood (Pike County), then its terminus, to Black Springs (Montgomery County). This announcement brought a large number of land speculators, including William E. Womble Sr., into the area. However, in 1907, a dispute over rights of way halted the project near the Caddo River, several miles short of its goal. The Black Spring Lumber Company abandoned its plans to build at a large lumber mill at Black Springs and chose a site at the railhead instead. It was soon joined by the Bear State Lumber Company. In 1907, Womble, taking advantage of the situation, acquired land and staked out a new town, named Womble, in a corn field just north of the railhead. Its post office opened in July 1907 with Womble as postmaster.
Moody's stated entities as Caddo Gap to Wobble and Antoine to Caddo Gap.
Looking above at the 1904 schedule, Caddo Gap is not mentioned nor has the railroad progressed past Pike City, Ark. If it is the ASR then in 1904, its listings were the same as the SWA&IT.
And, remember the Caddo and Choctaw connected Rosboro, through Womble to Cooper. in 1907.
So of 1907, the Gurdon and Ft.Smith had only progressed to Rosboro, the center of the Caddo Lumber Company's holdings.
Below is one more reason to reject the ASR claim to 1900 (Antoine to Caddo Gap).
And this litigation places the Gudon & Fort Smith RR at Antoine in 1908.
Need a map?
To get you excited, here's the Glenwood picture.
This is the one Steve sent. The one above is from the opposite direction.
Looking the other way.
The original
:
And another Glenwood structure.
West of Glenwood is another bridge.
Now a little history.
In 1845 there was one sawmill assessed in Montgomery County, Arkansas. By 1860 there were four sawmills valued at $8,700 which used raw materials valued at $6,500 employed six persons and paid wages wages totaling $1,260. Lumber produced was valued at $27,350. Small sawmills sprang up all over the county as pioneer homes were being replaced by homes of cut lumber. Cross ties were needed for the railroads so tie hackers came by the dozen. In 1897 the Missouri-Pacific Railroad Company built a line that ran from Gurdon through Clark, Pike and Montgomery counties to meet the needs of the booming timber industries in these areas.
The Black Springs Lumber Company built a mill at Womble (Norman) in 1907. Rough cut lumber was hauled by mules from the sawmills [sets] in the area to Womble where the planer was situated. This mill proved to be one of the biggest employers in southern Montgomery County until the early 1950s. The above two photographs are courtesy of Shirley A. Manning. Posted 9 May, 2000.
The photo above shows six men on the entrance to a part of the mill at
Womble. Thomas Clifton Moore (Clifford) is standing, second from the right and sitting
directly below him is William Robert Moore (Rob) who married Irma Lee Miller. Rob's
father-in-law Joe Miller was at one time a foreman at the mill. Clifford's uncles Clinton
(Clint) and Claude Moore worked at the mill. Some time in the late 30s and early 40s these
families moved to California. Photo courtesy of Bill
Humble. Posted August 23, 2000.
Black Springs missed out on the RR.
Black Springs missed out on the RR. Here is its story. Below is included because Black Springs is mentioned below and its description is enlightening.
Black Springs is a town on State Highway 8 in Montgomery County. Surrounded by the Ouachita National Forest, Black Springs had the potential to be one of the larger communities in the county until the planned railroad failed to be built through the town.
Members of the Caddo Nation were living along the Caddo River when white settlers first arrived in the area. The springs for which the town was named were surrounded by black rocks—perhaps an ore of manganese or iron, or both. Also, a family named Black camped by the springs for a while. Either may have been the source of the name.
A road connecting Hot Springs (Garland County) to Dallas (Polk County) ran east and west past the springs, crossing the road that ran north to Mount Ida (Montgomery County) and south to Langley (Pike County). A Baptist church, one of the oldest such churches west of the Mississippi River, was established near the crossroads and springs in 1836. James Jeffrey claimed land west of the springs in 1848, and Jefferson Bates became his neighbor in 1855. A post office was established at Black Springs in 1869, and William B. Seay claimed land around the springs in 1876. Sarah Seay was the first postmaster for Black Springs.
By 1884, Black Springs was home to two doctors, a dentist, a druggist, and a lawyer. There were two churches—Baptist and Methodist—and several stores. A school district was established in 1886, supported by a tax base of sixty-three families. The population has been estimated at 250 residents at that time. A newspaper called the Black Springs Herald was published by J. M Raines beginning in 1880. In 1896, John Middleton and Jesse Irby quarreled over a fence line and property rights, fighting a duel in which Irby was killed. The Fort Smith and Gurdon Railway surveyed a route through the area late in the nineteenth century, but the railroad was never built.
By 1900, the community had a post office, a public school, a spring house and bath house, several mills, and a park. A cotton gin, powered by oxen, had also been built. The Black Springs school hosted a two-week teacher training academy (known then as a “normal school”) each summer. The community had a Masonic lodge and a lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), as well as two hotels and two saloons. William Rowton established the Black Springs–Caddo Valley Bank in the early twentieth century. In 1907, the bank was robbed, and the thieves blew up the building.
Ingram Lumber Company, based in Kansas City, Missouri, leased large swaths of land in the Black Springs area and formed the Black Springs Lumber Company. For a while it appeared that the railroad, planned earlier by the Fort Smith and Gurdon Railway, would be built by the Missouri Pacific Company through Black Springs, eventually extending to Fort Smith (Sebastian County). A dispute over right-of-way, however, diverted the line to the east. By 1907, when it became evident that the railroad was not going to reach Black Springs, the Black Springs company relocated to Womble—later renamed Norman (Montgomery County)—though the company kept the name Black Springs until it closed its last mill in 1925.
Boyd Anderson Tackett was born in Black Springs in 1911. A few years later, he and his family moved to Glenwood (Pike County). Tackett represented the Fourth District of Arkansas in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1953.
As Womble/Norman grew due to the lumber industry, Black Springs remained a smaller agricultural center. Since the late nineteenth century, farming in the area had been diversified, featuring cotton, tobacco, and assorted vegetables. The Black Springs School District consolidated with that of Norman in 1929, but a new school building was built in Black Springs in 1932. The building was used as a school until 1955, when a new school was built in Norman. Black Springs was incorporated as a town in 1936. Three men from Black Springs died while serving in the armed forces during World War II. The post office was closed in 1980. By 1986, Black Springs had only the Baptist church and a community center building. The town’s population in 2010 was ninety-nine, all of whom were white.
For additional information:The Goodspeed Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas. Chicago: Southern Publishing Company, 1891.
Montgomery County Historical Society. Montgomery County Our Heritage. 2 vols. Mount Ida, AR: Montgomery County Historical Society, 1986, 1990.
Womble won the railroad.
Norman, known as Womble until 1925, is located on the Caddo River in southern Montgomery County. It was created as a result of the building of the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad and grew because of the lumber mills that sprang up along its right of way. It was once the home of the Presbyterian Church’s Caddo Valley Academy.
In 1905, plans were announced to extend the Gurdon and Fort Smith line from Glenwood (Pike County), then its terminus, to Black Springs (Montgomery County). This announcement brought a large number of land speculators, including William E. Womble Sr., into the area. However, in 1907, a dispute over rights of way halted the project near the Caddo River, several miles short of its goal. The Black Spring Lumber Company abandoned its plans to build at a large lumber mill at Black Springs and chose a site at the railhead instead. It was soon joined by the Bear State Lumber Company. In 1907, Womble, taking advantage of the situation, acquired land and staked out a new town, named Womble, in a corn field just north of the railhead. Its post office opened in July 1907 with Womble as postmaster.
Within a year, Womble was a bustling village with hotels, churches, a newspaper, and some fifty residents, many of whom came here from other parts of Arkansas. The Womble Special School District was formed two years later. When the town was incorporated on February 14, 1910, it had a population of 552.
In 1914, it became the location of the Ouachita National Forest’s Womble Ranger Station. In 1915, the citizens of Womble made the first of three unsuccessful attempts to have the county seat moved from Mount Ida to the new community. Womble was the main backer of this proposal.
In 1920, the Arkansas Presbyterian Church began an educational mission work, or “mountain mission,” at Womble under the care of local minister, Dr. John T. Barr. The next year, a boarding school called Caddo Valley Academy opened to help educate the area’s “worthy but needy” children. In 1924, the academy obtained a thirty-seven-acre site at Womble and began construction of a complex of buildings. For many years, the academy was a landmark in southern Montgomery County. During the 1930s, its operations were gradually consolidated with those of the Norman school district.
From 1915 through 1923, Womble and his supporters became a disruptive factor in local politics as they sought unsuccessfully to move the county seat to their town. However, his influence waned, especially after 1922, when he was replaced as postmaster. In 1925, his fellow citizens won a change of name for their community, from Womble to Norman. Within a short while, Womble and his family moved to Fort Smith (Sebastian County).
Norman’s early fortunes were tied to the lumber industry. However, by the 1930s, most of the prime timber in the area had been cut, and the mills began to move elsewhere. A few small area sawmills kept the town’s economy going on a reduced scale. Norman’s schools consolidated with those of nearby Caddo Gap (Montgomery County) in 1971, forming the Caddo Hills School District.
In 1982, Norman lost its railroad connection, and its population dropped to 382 in 1990. Now it serves as a bedroom community for workers with employment in nearby larger towns; its population rose to 423 by 2000, although it fell to 378 by the 2010 census.
Norman’s most famous citizen was Dr. John T. Barr, Presbyterian minister and educator. He was the founder of the Caddo Valley Academy and widely known throughout Arkansas for his pioneering mission and educational work. Following his death in 1963, the name of the Norman Presbyterian Church was changed to the Barr Memorial Church in his honor.
Added info, some redundant from some internet group.
"Womble was renamed NORMAN. Its between Mt. Ida and Glenwood, AR. Its a quaint little village and the citizens have done a good job of keeping it mostly as it was in 1944. There was a railroad and lumber mill. That's where my Grandfather worked. Hatties Cafe had the best hamburgers I ever ate", wrote Linda, in 2006.
Below:
REMEMBERING ARKANSAS
Tom W. Dillard, 18 November 2007 The Arkansas Democrat Gazette
[There are also some mistakes in Tom Dillard's article. He took his material from the History Book, and that too was incorrect.]
"The small town of Norman, in the beautiful mountains of southern Montgomery County, recently celebrated its centennial. While I was unable to participate in the events, I did have the pleasure to visit the town recently and talk with Mrs. Shirley Shewmake Manning, the guiding force behind the celebration. While Norman is one of the younger towns in Arkansas, the area itself was inhabited by American Indians for thousands of years. Norman is in a broad valley on the north bank of the Caddo River, and evidence indicates that human activity stretched back more than 10,000 years. The town is surrounded by the Ouachita National Forest, which is only fitting because it was the virgin pine forests of the area that caused Norman to be formed in the first place. As historian and archivist Russell P. Baker has noted in his entry on Norman in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, the town resulted from the construction of a large sawmill at the terminus of the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad on the Caddo River in 1907.
The arrival of the railroad into a new area often brought out the land speculators. These speculators were already a familiar presence in Arkansas by 1907. William E. Woodruff, for example, is famous as the founder of the Arkansas Gazette in 1819, but he actually made most of his income from buying and selling land. The Womble family, including mother Celia Elizabeth and sons W.E., Theodore A. and Oscar O., bought all the land around the railroad terminus in the name of the Womble Land and Timber Co.
In 1907, W.E. Womble laid out the new town and named it after himself. The same year he succeeded in getting himself named as the town's first postmaster. The new town grew rapidly, which was not unusual for frontier settlements. The Black Springs Lumber Co. built a large mill, which was soon joined by the Bear State Lumber Co. Within a year, the village bustled with activity. Hotels provided lodging for visitors, while several churches flourished, and the citizens soon had a newspaper of their own, The News.
By Feb. 14, 1910, when Womble was incorporated, it had a population of 552. The Black Springs Lumber Co. provided the economic backbone for Womble, and later Norman, for two generations.
The company evolved from Ingram Lumber Co. of Kansas City, which had bought large tracts of land along the upper Caddo. The intention was to build the sawmill at Black Springs, which was supposed to be the terminus. However, a few landowners fought the extension of the railroad across their land, and the terminus ended up being about two miles east of Black Springs. The company kept the name Black Springs. From its founding in 1907 until its demise after World War II, the Black Springs Lumber Co. not only provided jobs for the area, its 6 a.m. whistle began the day and the evening whistle signaled the day's end. Trains carrying long lines of flatcars stacked high with lumber sounded their plaintive whistles well into the night.
W.E. Womble was something of a politician who worked hard to have the seat of county government moved from Mount Ida, about 10 miles to the north, to his own town. He correctly noted that Womble was twice as large as Mount Ida, had rail service, could boast of the Caddo Valley Academy, and in 1914 Womble had become the home of the new Womble District of the Ouachita National Forest. In 1915, Womble made the first of three attempts to win the county seat. Each attempt failed, probably because Mount Ida was much more centrally located. The campaigns grew increasingly acrimonious, and W.E. Womble was viewed by many as a troublemaker. He was replaced as postmaster in 1922. In 1925, Womble residents successfully petitioned to change the town's name to Norman, and the Womble family left the area.
One of the early arrivals in Womble was Dr. John Tillman Barr Jr., a young minister from Hope, sent by the Presbyterian Church in 1911 to start a church in the new town. Barr was a graduate of Arkansas College in Batesville and Presbyterian Union Seminary in Richmond, Va. What was expected to be a brief assignment turned into a lifetime of work for Barr. He convinced the Presbyterian Synod to designate Womble as a mission - a "mountain mission" as it was sometimes called. Barr opened Caddo Valley Academy in 1921. By 1924, the academy had its own building, which included a large auditorium, a science lab and a library of 1,200 books. It was to become the first accredited high school in Montgomery County. Barr organized a strong curriculum, with courses in the sciences, English, mathematics, history and Latin. The Bible was taught, but Barr assured everyone that "the study will be confined to the historical sections, and discussion of matters about which Christians differ will not be allowed."
Eventually the academy building was sold to Norman Public Schools, the name officially changing after the 1930-31 school year. Barr then established the Presbyterian Children's Home in the old academy dormitory. The Children's Home continued until 1962, and Barr died the following year. The 2000 census counted 423 residents in Norman, with 100 fewer people than in 1910. In recent years the Norman Historic Preservation Program Inc. (Box 226, Norman, Ark. 71960) has worked to preserve the town's historic high school. The group recently published a 96-page book on the town.
Tom W. Dillard is the founding editor of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture (www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net ), and head of the special collections department at the University of Arkansas Libraries in Fayetteville. E-mail him at tdillar@uark.edu
History of Womble, Arkansas - The Record (Garland County Historical Society) 14:13 1973
Now to the other end of the line.
GURDON
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[1]
In 1880 the town was incorporated. Located on US 67, the town grew up around the railroad lines and timber industry, which continues to play an important role in the area’s economy. Early development of the town was tied to the arrival of the railroad to Clark County. Gurdon came to be because of its location at the intersection of several important lumbering railroads and it’s location near stands of timber.
Construction of railroads played a crucial role in the growth of the lumber industry. The town started as a construction camp on the Iron Mountain Railway, which was completed in 1873. Soon the railway constructed a branch to Camden leaving a main line from Gurdon which increased the regional centrality of town. The town was attractive as a mill site, allowing the town to participate in the rapid expansion of the lumber industry in the South. The small settlement was a junction for railway to Womble-Amity-Mt.Ida-Glenwood, and another to Camden-El Dorado-Northern Louisiana. 1968 marked final passenger service to the city.
Prowling the internet has unearthed gold. I'll explain later.
Just read along. You will not be sorry.
The Gurdon to Norman Branch reached farther north and west than the research below first found. The mill extended the actual tracks The write on the Gurdon to Norman begins below.
The map below explains the above. Starting from the south, the red line is the official Missouri Pacific route, Gurdon to Norman. The mill RR extended the rails to Maudlin. The darker purple line is the connecter between Forester and Mauldin, a true feat. Green is the stretch between Forester and Waldron, aka, the Forester Extention.
All that can be found HERE, a research paper on the Heavener to Forester Branch.
This project was born of an old friend sending a picture of a railroad trestle with folks swimming in the beautiful river below. The picture had a lot "in it" including energy.There was the unknown past and the kinetic present.
After receiving the picture, I kicked the search engines into high gear. I saved one page after another, never reading their full content until my folder was overflowing. At about twelve o'clock last night I shut it down. This morning, before my 10:00 AM curfew on internet play, I had sorted what I'd found. "Assembling a presentation", if no one reads past the first sentence is a win for me. Railroad history is a huge puzzle. One line can have a dozen owners in its past. Where no definitive chronology exists, the work begins. As they say on the railroad, "Here we go".
Consider Smithton to be Gurdon. Consider Pike City to be Antoine.
Below is an 1895 map. It predates the schedule below.
The SWA&IT, 1894, was the Souithwestern Arkansas & Indian Territory RR.
It went out of business and the Iron Mountain's sub purchased it at sale.
It was renamed the Arkansas Southwestern Railway.
.
Below he says, ".....Arkansas Southwestern & Indian Territory Railroad, 1896 .... Delight Division".
"Southwestern Arkansas & Indian Territory Railroad" is on the 1895 map.. And, we know that incorporation by the Iron Mountain (Missouri Pacific sub) did not take place until 1900 at the earliest..
The trip this railroad has taken is stranger than any Grateful Dead song.
The Southwestern Arkansas and Indian Territory Railroad was a railroad in the U.S. state of Arkansas in the late 19th century.[1] The 10-mile-long, 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge line opened in July 1887 as an extension between Smithton and Hebron in Cleveland County, Arkansas. The line was converted to 4 ft 8 1 ⁄ in (1,435 mm) standard gauge in 1891.[1]
I cannot find Hebron. Burtsell is the closest match at 9 miles.
The line was sold at foreclosure on 13 March 1900 after receivership was begun in March 1896, and reorganized on 28 April 1900 as the Arkansas Southwestern Railway Co.
Another clipping:
Caddo River Lumber Company
Caddo River Lumber Company was one of the largest lumber companies operating in the Ouachita Mountains during the first half of the twentieth century. During the Depression, it may have been the largest manufacturing employer in the state. However, like many other lumber companies of the era, it succumbed to a shortsighted policy of non-sustainable practices.
The Caddo River Lumber Company was organized in 1906 by Thomas Whitaker Rosborough, M. R. Smith, W. E. Cooper, and Lee Wilson of Kansas City, Missouri, with Smith as president and Rosborough as vice president, though the latter managed the operations of the company. Rosborough had previously operated sawmills and a planing mill in Arkansas and Louisiana and had done some work for Ozan Lumber Company, which was established by some relatives of his sister’s husband.
Obtaining backing from his Kansas City partners, he sought to establish a sawmill along the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad, settling on a site in Pike County he named Rosboro after himself, though with a simplified spelling.
The sawmill was in place by 1907. He proceeded to purchase land from his in-laws in the Ozan Lumber Company and later purchased more land from Dierks Lumber and Coal Company. The company built a number of railroad spurs into the land it owned for the easy transportation of logs but soon chartered the Caddo and Choctaw Railroad Company, which carried passengers and freight in addition to timber. However, the railroad was never completed all the way to Fort Smith (Sebastian County), as had been planned, but rather stopped at the town of Norman (Montgomery County).
Me: So the Rosboro to Womble / Norman stretch was the C&C RR Co. before it was the Gurdon & Fort Smith. Could this be the explanation why "Fort Smith is in the G&FS's name. It was meant to reach Fort Smith. The C&CR Co. never made it to Fort Smith but its initial target was that town. That railroad would become part of the G&FS which makes me believe its owner and those of the G&FS did a little card playing.
(cont.)
In 1915, the sawmill at Rosboro burned; it was soon rebuilt at double capacity. In 1918, the company acquired 30,000 acres in the Montgomery County area from Graham Lumber Company of St. Louis, Missouri; other acquisitions soon followed, and Caddo River Lumber Company eventually owned timberland and cutting rights across most of northern Montgomery County. The company established a site four miles from Mount Ida (Montgomery County), named Mauldin, to serve as a logging center; after track was laid to Mauldin in 1922, it became a regular logging town. That same year, the company purchased the Glenwood (Pike County) sawmill, town lots, and other buildings from the A. L. Clark Lumber Company. With two double-band mills and large holdings in Montgomery County, Caddo River Lumber Company emerged as the second largest in the Ouachita Mountain area, behind only Dierks.
Rosborough was at ease with African Americans and employed quite a few, but this attitude frequently brought him into conflict with locals, given that many communities in the Ouachita Mountains were “sundown towns”—places where African Americans were forbidden by white residents from living, usually through the threat of violence. At the very beginning of the Caddo River Lumber Company’s operation, Rosborough sought to buy land for a sawmill at Amity (Clark County), but local residents balked at the idea of black people entering their town, and so he chose the site that became Rosboro. Would-be whitecappers once distributed leaflets around Rosboro warning African Americans to leave, to which Rosborough responded by arming his black mill workers for their self-protection. He also installed a high board fence around the black quarters until the threats died down. Waldron (Scott County) and Mount Ida also turned down offers from Rosborough to build sawmills there due to his employment of black workers. Rosborough also experienced difficulties keeping black workers at Mauldin due to local antipathy.
In 1924, M. R. Smith sold his share in the company to Kansas City lumberman William F. Ingham. By the middle of the decade, through purchases both large and small, Caddo River Lumber Company reached into Yell and Scott counties. However, the company greatly limited much of its future profitability by not initiating a sustainability program and selling much of its cutover land to Dierks, which was then planting said land with the expectation of harvesting second-growth trees. By the early 1930s, Dierks and Caddo River were the only lumber companies operating in the Ouachita Mountains. Caddo River established a new sawmill in Scott County at a site named Forester, about twenty miles southeast of Waldron. This expansion drained company resources at a time when the Depression was already hitting hard, though Caddo River managed to maintain a payroll of more than 1,000 people.
In 1936, a disastrous fire in Glenwood burned the sheds and a planing mill there, and they were not rebuilt. The following year, the company finished removing timber in Montgomery County and dismantled the site at Mauldin. At the end of 1937, the Glenwood sawmill was shut down and sold, though after a 1938 fire at Forester destroyed that mill, the company bought it back and transferred it. The expansion of the Ouachita National Forest during this decade allowed Caddo River to sell approximately 200,000 acres of cutover land. Very few people in the company’s leadership were interested in pursuing operations on cutover land, even though Dierks’s sustainability program was demonstrating promise; Dierks also had a policy of converting wood waste into boiler fuel or other products rather than simply burning it. In 1939, the sawmill at Rosboro closed, and some of the equipment was transferred to Oregon, where Rosborough had recently purchased land and established a sawmill. Rosborough sold his interest in the company to Hal Shaffer, who became president. At the time, Caddo River’s only mill was at Forester. On July 17, 1945, Shaffer sold Caddo River’s operations, land, and cutting rights to Dierks Lumber and Coal Company.
For additional information:Balogh, George W. Entrepreneurs in the Lumber Industry: Arkansas, 1881–1963. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995.
Smith, Kenneth L. Sawmill: The Story of Cutting the Last Great Virgin Forest East of the Rockies. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1986.
Understand that the Arkansas Southwestern was to the south connecting Smithton to Pike City, which was just south of Antoine or, they could be the same. It served the same area that was on the 1895 map of the Southwestern Arkansas & Indian Territory. In the Moody's bookkeeping I found, thisouth portion, Smithton to Pike City was not mentioned, the ASR. Only the connector between Gurdon and Simthton and Antoine (Pike City?) and Caddo Gap
.
Trestle on the Delight Division.
While I have the listing above, let me point out that the Delight Division which began at Pike Jct.
and shot eastward..
Lets be done with the Delight Division ...
Several decades after Pike County was formed and almost seventy years after Arkansas became a state, Delight became an incorporated town. The earliest known inhabitants of the area were the Quapaw Indians, a tribe of the great Dakotas who at one time had a population of many thousands. By the latter part of the seventeenth century white people had begun to settle near the banks of Wolf Creek. In fact, so many came that the settlement became known as "Wolf Creek". Some of the earliest settlers of "Wolf Creek" community were the Kirkhams, Kellys, Dixons, Dosses, Carpenters, Dosseys, Mobleys, Wards, Greens, Lambs, Griffins, Clingmans, Wilsons, and Hancocks. On January 18, 1832, a post office was granted to a place called "Wolf Creek," the settlement which was later to become Delight. In the 1833 Territorial Papers of the United States proposals for mail contracts in Arkansas Territory, "Wolf Creek" was named as a mail stop between Little Rock and Hempstead County Courthouse, which was in Washington at that time. The "Wolf Creek" post office was listed again in 1834. The amount of postage from "Wolf Creek's" post office was $13.73 for that year.
On August 21, 1873, Samuel Hasley purchased almost 43 acres of land from the United States for $1.25 an acre. This acreage covers the present site of Delight. A few years later the land was sold to S. B. Dixon and wife, Nancy, who in turn sold it to Abner H. Hancock for $500. On January 4, 1853 he deeded it to David Mobley for the consideration of $700. This land remained in the Mobley family until 1860 when the heirs to David Mobley, then deceased, granted to convey their rights, titles, and interest to William H. Kirkham for the sum of $800.
On December 13, 1895, Southwestern Arkansas, an Indian Territory Railroad Company, paid William H. Kirkham $1.00 for a 100-foot right-of-way and other territory through which their railroad was to be built. As the people of the community learned of the coming of the railroad, excitement grew. The prospects of train service brought new life into the community. A town site was provided and the location of the railroad station was selected. A new town was born, but it must have a name. Since William H. Kirkham, known also as Bill Kirkham, had so generously given the site for the town the city fathers thought he should have the privilege of giving the new town its name. Kirkham said, "This is such a delightful place to live, we shall call the town Delight.". In Pike County Court Record B, page 413, it is found the proceedings of the Incorporation of the town of Delight. It was July 25, 1904, when the petition for incorporation of the town was read before the court and properly filed. All the requirements were met and the petition duly recorded September 9, 1905. John Brock became the first mayor of the new town.
The coming of the new railroad brought new industry to Delight. R.B. F Key was interested in the timber business and he saw in the forests of virgin timber a veritable gold mine. He secured a site and proceeded to build a saw mill and planer. Early on a morning 1897 the whistle sounded and the wheels began to turn. Lumber was shipped far and near on the railroad but it was also used to build new houses for the residents of the Delight. Business boomed and so did Delight. Near the town, large deposits of gravel offered more industry. So carloads of gravel was also shipped over the new railroad. Key built a large hotel to accommodate the drummers who descended on the town to sell their wares to the rapidly expanding business district. Some of the early merchants were A. E. West brook, C. E. Reid, Bose and Jim Bratton, and the Geiser brothers. O. L Mckinney owned and operated the first cold drink stand. As the town grew, a need for a doctor arose. Antoine, a neighboring town 5 miles away, had shared its Dr. Kirkham with the community of Delight for a number of years. So Dr. Rice was the first to become the town's physician in 1903. After Dr. Rice, Dr, Rodgers moved to Delight from Mississippi and practiced medicine for several years. Other Doctors who gave unstintingly of their time were Dr. Walls, Dr. Newt Slaughter, Dr. Joe Thomasson, Dr. W. P. Hemby, and Dr. B. S. Stokes. Dr. Hemby's brother, Hosea, operated a drug store. Ed Brewer became the town's first post master.
About the year 1909 Key sold his saw mill and planer to the Blakely brothers and for six to seven years they continued to operate the mill. But the Forest had been mostly cut over and the saw mill business could no longer be profitable to the owners. So the business was closed and people became interested in other work. Farming was one of the principal occupations with cotton as the leading crop. By 1919 Delight was a very good cotton market. The twenties were very prosperous years. Money was plentiful and credit was easy. When the depression hit in 1930, Delight, like, all other towns and cities across the nation, became paralyzed with fear. But they never gave up hope for a better day. And that day came in 1936, when the Ozan Lumber Company of Prescott began construction of a large saw mill and planer and by January 1937 the wheels of industry began to turn again for the city. new housing projects were completed and for the second time Delight became a thriving mill town.[4]
I tried to find Delight on the mainline of the railroad. It was not there on any of my maps.
Then I backed off and there it was due east of Antoine. The black line depicts the last vestige of
the railroad. I followed the scar to Delight and its Railroad St. I also followed the scar out of town to
where there was some industry, possibly the sawmill. The pictured trestle was off of AR 26.
Yes, the "industry" was the mill.
The "Delight Division" is not mentioned on this early listing, but the depot, Delight, is.
Now for Bobo:
This is the location of some tabernacle. But it is a lead. It is in the Okolona area.
Bobo Road begins at Okoloma and goes north.
It end at where I presume the place to be.
Was there a spur to Bobo or was it on the main line.
Bobo Road crossed the main line but too close to Okoloma to fit
the schedule.
I can't find the spur's scar, so I can't say there was one, wherever Bobo was.
The above is an example of really getting side tracked.
Other routes of the Arkansas Southwestern taken from that 1904 Commission book.
Below is totally redundant.
That old map which was dated 1895 and uses Southwestern Arkansas & Indian Territory fits this description.
The Southwestern Arkansas and Indian Territory Railroad was a railroad in the U.S. state of Arkansas in the late 19th century.[1] The 10-mile-long, 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge line opened in July 1887 as an extension between Smithton and Hebron in Cleveland County, Arkansas. The line was converted to 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge in 1891.[1]
The line was sold at foreclosure on 13 March 1900 after receivership was begun in March 1896, and reorganized on 28 April 1900 as the Arkansas Southwestern Railway
The ASR was what had been built between Smithton and Pike City.
The G&FS had been incorporated in 1900, so had the Arkansas Southwestern according to some.
Now I'm stumped as the ASW has a division called the Gurdon and Fort Smith
and the Gurdon & Ft. Smith had a Northern and "original" section, incorporated at different times.
As mentioned above, there were 2 versions of the G&FS, to make it more exciting.
"Controlled through stock ownership", in the clipping above, refers to "S.L.I.M.&S, below.
Here was a little info gathered from a "memorabilia" website.
GURDON AND FORT SMITH RAILROAD.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern RR.
More clippings. Note the date as being 1906.
Below, Moody's states one end of the description as the Gurdon & Fort Smith near Antoine.
It passes from that point northward though various counties to Womble, aka, Norman. This would be the "Northern G&FS".
Below, Moody covers that little bit between Smithton and Gurdon."1906" is the important date. Both G&FS routes. north & original, had been established.
Again, here are the two G&FS's.
GURDON AND FORT SMITH NORTHERN RAILROAD
Moody's Bonding Co. information.
1) St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Ry
Inc. in AR, March 17, 1905
5.74 mi. Caddo Gap to Womble, AR
(the north section)
2) St. Louis, Iron Moutain and Southern Ry
Inc. in AR, June 11, 1909
35.11 mi. Antoine to Caddo Gap, AR and Gurdon to Smithton, AR (1.24 mi).
Here is the Antoine to Caddo Gap portion mentioned above and that little bit on the Iron Mountain main line between Gurdon and Smithdon. Moody does not mention Smithton to Antoine. Perhaps it was already paid for and since Moody was a bonding entity, that is why it is not mentioned. So, this separation only reflects borrowed money and not complete railroad financial architecture.
So, not being a scholar, not being from Arkansas, and having just landed in this historical mess, I'm going to day that between the SWA&IT, which went belly up, and the Iron Mountain assuming control of the line, 1909, the railroad was named the Gurdon & Fort Smith RR/Rwy.
So how does this work .....
With this? I can only guess that the south portion, Smithton to Pike City was the 1900 "Gurdon to Fort Smith RR". The north part, would have to be the remainder, Glenwood to Womble / Norman or, a lot of lumber mills.
(no I did not miss that the stretch between Pike City, Antoine, and Glenwood, is not accounted for)
Excerpt:
In 1905, plans were announced to extend the Gurdon and Fort Smith line from Glenwood (Pike County), then its terminus, to Black Springs (Montgomery County). This announcement brought a large number of land speculators, including William E. Womble Sr., into the area. However, in 1907, a dispute over rights of way halted the project near the Caddo River, several miles short of its goal. The Black Spring Lumber Company abandoned its plans to build at a large lumber mill at Black Springs and chose a site at the railhead instead. It was soon joined by the Bear State Lumber Company. In 1907, Womble, taking advantage of the situation, acquired land and staked out a new town, named Womble, in a corn field just north of the railhead. Its post office opened in July 1907 with Womble as postmaster.
Moody's stated entities as Caddo Gap to Wobble and Antoine to Caddo Gap.
Looking above at the 1904 schedule, Caddo Gap is not mentioned nor has the railroad progressed past Pike City, Ark. If it is the ASR then in 1904, its listings were the same as the SWA&IT.
And, remember the Caddo and Choctaw connected Rosboro, through Womble to Cooper. in 1907.
So of 1907, the Gurdon and Ft.Smith had only progressed to Rosboro, the center of the Caddo Lumber Company's holdings.
Below is one more reason to reject the ASR claim to 1900 (Antoine to Caddo Gap).
And this litigation places the Gudon & Fort Smith RR at Antoine in 1908.
Need a map?
To get you excited, here's the Glenwood picture.
This is the one Steve sent. The one above is from the opposite direction.
Looking the other way.
The original
:
And another Glenwood structure.
West of Glenwood is another bridge.
Now a little history.
In 1845 there was one sawmill assessed in Montgomery County, Arkansas. By 1860 there were four sawmills valued at $8,700 which used raw materials valued at $6,500 employed six persons and paid wages wages totaling $1,260. Lumber produced was valued at $27,350. Small sawmills sprang up all over the county as pioneer homes were being replaced by homes of cut lumber. Cross ties were needed for the railroads so tie hackers came by the dozen. In 1897 the Missouri-Pacific Railroad Company built a line that ran from Gurdon through Clark, Pike and Montgomery counties to meet the needs of the booming timber industries in these areas.
The Black Springs Lumber Company built a mill at Womble (Norman) in 1907. Rough cut lumber was hauled by mules from the sawmills [sets] in the area to Womble where the planer was situated. This mill proved to be one of the biggest employers in southern Montgomery County until the early 1950s. The above two photographs are courtesy of Shirley A. Manning. Posted 9 May, 2000.
Black Springs missed out on the RR.
Black Springs missed out on the RR. Here is its story. Below is included because Black Springs is mentioned below and its description is enlightening.
Black Springs is a town on State Highway 8 in Montgomery County. Surrounded by the Ouachita National Forest, Black Springs had the potential to be one of the larger communities in the county until the planned railroad failed to be built through the town.
Members of the Caddo Nation were living along the Caddo River when white settlers first arrived in the area. The springs for which the town was named were surrounded by black rocks—perhaps an ore of manganese or iron, or both. Also, a family named Black camped by the springs for a while. Either may have been the source of the name.
A road connecting Hot Springs (Garland County) to Dallas (Polk County) ran east and west past the springs, crossing the road that ran north to Mount Ida (Montgomery County) and south to Langley (Pike County). A Baptist church, one of the oldest such churches west of the Mississippi River, was established near the crossroads and springs in 1836. James Jeffrey claimed land west of the springs in 1848, and Jefferson Bates became his neighbor in 1855. A post office was established at Black Springs in 1869, and William B. Seay claimed land around the springs in 1876. Sarah Seay was the first postmaster for Black Springs.
By 1884, Black Springs was home to two doctors, a dentist, a druggist, and a lawyer. There were two churches—Baptist and Methodist—and several stores. A school district was established in 1886, supported by a tax base of sixty-three families. The population has been estimated at 250 residents at that time. A newspaper called the Black Springs Herald was published by J. M Raines beginning in 1880. In 1896, John Middleton and Jesse Irby quarreled over a fence line and property rights, fighting a duel in which Irby was killed. The Fort Smith and Gurdon Railway surveyed a route through the area late in the nineteenth century, but the railroad was never built.
By 1900, the community had a post office, a public school, a spring house and bath house, several mills, and a park. A cotton gin, powered by oxen, had also been built. The Black Springs school hosted a two-week teacher training academy (known then as a “normal school”) each summer. The community had a Masonic lodge and a lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), as well as two hotels and two saloons. William Rowton established the Black Springs–Caddo Valley Bank in the early twentieth century. In 1907, the bank was robbed, and the thieves blew up the building.
Ingram Lumber Company, based in Kansas City, Missouri, leased large swaths of land in the Black Springs area and formed the Black Springs Lumber Company. For a while it appeared that the railroad, planned earlier by the Fort Smith and Gurdon Railway, would be built by the Missouri Pacific Company through Black Springs, eventually extending to Fort Smith (Sebastian County). A dispute over right-of-way, however, diverted the line to the east. By 1907, when it became evident that the railroad was not going to reach Black Springs, the Black Springs company relocated to Womble—later renamed Norman (Montgomery County)—though the company kept the name Black Springs until it closed its last mill in 1925.
Boyd Anderson Tackett was born in Black Springs in 1911. A few years later, he and his family moved to Glenwood (Pike County). Tackett represented the Fourth District of Arkansas in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1953.
As Womble/Norman grew due to the lumber industry, Black Springs remained a smaller agricultural center. Since the late nineteenth century, farming in the area had been diversified, featuring cotton, tobacco, and assorted vegetables. The Black Springs School District consolidated with that of Norman in 1929, but a new school building was built in Black Springs in 1932. The building was used as a school until 1955, when a new school was built in Norman. Black Springs was incorporated as a town in 1936. Three men from Black Springs died while serving in the armed forces during World War II. The post office was closed in 1980. By 1986, Black Springs had only the Baptist church and a community center building. The town’s population in 2010 was ninety-nine, all of whom were white.
For additional information:The Goodspeed Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas. Chicago: Southern Publishing Company, 1891.
Montgomery County Historical Society. Montgomery County Our Heritage. 2 vols. Mount Ida, AR: Montgomery County Historical Society, 1986, 1990.
Womble won the railroad.
Norman, known as Womble until 1925, is located on the Caddo River in southern Montgomery County. It was created as a result of the building of the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad and grew because of the lumber mills that sprang up along its right of way. It was once the home of the Presbyterian Church’s Caddo Valley Academy.
In 1905, plans were announced to extend the Gurdon and Fort Smith line from Glenwood (Pike County), then its terminus, to Black Springs (Montgomery County). This announcement brought a large number of land speculators, including William E. Womble Sr., into the area. However, in 1907, a dispute over rights of way halted the project near the Caddo River, several miles short of its goal. The Black Spring Lumber Company abandoned its plans to build at a large lumber mill at Black Springs and chose a site at the railhead instead. It was soon joined by the Bear State Lumber Company. In 1907, Womble, taking advantage of the situation, acquired land and staked out a new town, named Womble, in a corn field just north of the railhead. Its post office opened in July 1907 with Womble as postmaster.
Within a year, Womble was a bustling village with hotels, churches, a newspaper, and some fifty residents, many of whom came here from other parts of Arkansas. The Womble Special School District was formed two years later. When the town was incorporated on February 14, 1910, it had a population of 552.
In 1914, it became the location of the Ouachita National Forest’s Womble Ranger Station. In 1915, the citizens of Womble made the first of three unsuccessful attempts to have the county seat moved from Mount Ida to the new community. Womble was the main backer of this proposal.
In 1920, the Arkansas Presbyterian Church began an educational mission work, or “mountain mission,” at Womble under the care of local minister, Dr. John T. Barr. The next year, a boarding school called Caddo Valley Academy opened to help educate the area’s “worthy but needy” children. In 1924, the academy obtained a thirty-seven-acre site at Womble and began construction of a complex of buildings. For many years, the academy was a landmark in southern Montgomery County. During the 1930s, its operations were gradually consolidated with those of the Norman school district.
From 1915 through 1923, Womble and his supporters became a disruptive factor in local politics as they sought unsuccessfully to move the county seat to their town. However, his influence waned, especially after 1922, when he was replaced as postmaster. In 1925, his fellow citizens won a change of name for their community, from Womble to Norman. Within a short while, Womble and his family moved to Fort Smith (Sebastian County).
Norman’s early fortunes were tied to the lumber industry. However, by the 1930s, most of the prime timber in the area had been cut, and the mills began to move elsewhere. A few small area sawmills kept the town’s economy going on a reduced scale. Norman’s schools consolidated with those of nearby Caddo Gap (Montgomery County) in 1971, forming the Caddo Hills School District.
In 1982, Norman lost its railroad connection, and its population dropped to 382 in 1990. Now it serves as a bedroom community for workers with employment in nearby larger towns; its population rose to 423 by 2000, although it fell to 378 by the 2010 census.
Norman’s most famous citizen was Dr. John T. Barr, Presbyterian minister and educator. He was the founder of the Caddo Valley Academy and widely known throughout Arkansas for his pioneering mission and educational work. Following his death in 1963, the name of the Norman Presbyterian Church was changed to the Barr Memorial Church in his honor.
Added info, some redundant from some internet group.
"Womble was renamed NORMAN. Its between Mt. Ida and Glenwood, AR. Its a quaint little village and the citizens have done a good job of keeping it mostly as it was in 1944. There was a railroad and lumber mill. That's where my Grandfather worked. Hatties Cafe had the best hamburgers I ever ate", wrote Linda, in 2006.
Below:
REMEMBERING ARKANSAS
Tom W. Dillard, 18 November 2007 The Arkansas Democrat Gazette
[There are also some mistakes in Tom Dillard's article. He took his material from the History Book, and that too was incorrect.]
"The small town of Norman, in the beautiful mountains of southern Montgomery County, recently celebrated its centennial. While I was unable to participate in the events, I did have the pleasure to visit the town recently and talk with Mrs. Shirley Shewmake Manning, the guiding force behind the celebration. While Norman is one of the younger towns in Arkansas, the area itself was inhabited by American Indians for thousands of years. Norman is in a broad valley on the north bank of the Caddo River, and evidence indicates that human activity stretched back more than 10,000 years. The town is surrounded by the Ouachita National Forest, which is only fitting because it was the virgin pine forests of the area that caused Norman to be formed in the first place. As historian and archivist Russell P. Baker has noted in his entry on Norman in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, the town resulted from the construction of a large sawmill at the terminus of the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad on the Caddo River in 1907.
The arrival of the railroad into a new area often brought out the land speculators. These speculators were already a familiar presence in Arkansas by 1907. William E. Woodruff, for example, is famous as the founder of the Arkansas Gazette in 1819, but he actually made most of his income from buying and selling land. The Womble family, including mother Celia Elizabeth and sons W.E., Theodore A. and Oscar O., bought all the land around the railroad terminus in the name of the Womble Land and Timber Co.
In 1907, W.E. Womble laid out the new town and named it after himself. The same year he succeeded in getting himself named as the town's first postmaster. The new town grew rapidly, which was not unusual for frontier settlements. The Black Springs Lumber Co. built a large mill, which was soon joined by the Bear State Lumber Co. Within a year, the village bustled with activity. Hotels provided lodging for visitors, while several churches flourished, and the citizens soon had a newspaper of their own, The News.
By Feb. 14, 1910, when Womble was incorporated, it had a population of 552. The Black Springs Lumber Co. provided the economic backbone for Womble, and later Norman, for two generations.
The company evolved from Ingram Lumber Co. of Kansas City, which had bought large tracts of land along the upper Caddo. The intention was to build the sawmill at Black Springs, which was supposed to be the terminus. However, a few landowners fought the extension of the railroad across their land, and the terminus ended up being about two miles east of Black Springs. The company kept the name Black Springs. From its founding in 1907 until its demise after World War II, the Black Springs Lumber Co. not only provided jobs for the area, its 6 a.m. whistle began the day and the evening whistle signaled the day's end. Trains carrying long lines of flatcars stacked high with lumber sounded their plaintive whistles well into the night.
W.E. Womble was something of a politician who worked hard to have the seat of county government moved from Mount Ida, about 10 miles to the north, to his own town. He correctly noted that Womble was twice as large as Mount Ida, had rail service, could boast of the Caddo Valley Academy, and in 1914 Womble had become the home of the new Womble District of the Ouachita National Forest. In 1915, Womble made the first of three attempts to win the county seat. Each attempt failed, probably because Mount Ida was much more centrally located. The campaigns grew increasingly acrimonious, and W.E. Womble was viewed by many as a troublemaker. He was replaced as postmaster in 1922. In 1925, Womble residents successfully petitioned to change the town's name to Norman, and the Womble family left the area.
One of the early arrivals in Womble was Dr. John Tillman Barr Jr., a young minister from Hope, sent by the Presbyterian Church in 1911 to start a church in the new town. Barr was a graduate of Arkansas College in Batesville and Presbyterian Union Seminary in Richmond, Va. What was expected to be a brief assignment turned into a lifetime of work for Barr. He convinced the Presbyterian Synod to designate Womble as a mission - a "mountain mission" as it was sometimes called. Barr opened Caddo Valley Academy in 1921. By 1924, the academy had its own building, which included a large auditorium, a science lab and a library of 1,200 books. It was to become the first accredited high school in Montgomery County. Barr organized a strong curriculum, with courses in the sciences, English, mathematics, history and Latin. The Bible was taught, but Barr assured everyone that "the study will be confined to the historical sections, and discussion of matters about which Christians differ will not be allowed."
Eventually the academy building was sold to Norman Public Schools, the name officially changing after the 1930-31 school year. Barr then established the Presbyterian Children's Home in the old academy dormitory. The Children's Home continued until 1962, and Barr died the following year. The 2000 census counted 423 residents in Norman, with 100 fewer people than in 1910. In recent years the Norman Historic Preservation Program Inc. (Box 226, Norman, Ark. 71960) has worked to preserve the town's historic high school. The group recently published a 96-page book on the town.
Tom W. Dillard is the founding editor of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture (www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net ), and head of the special collections department at the University of Arkansas Libraries in Fayetteville. E-mail him at tdillar@uark.edu
History of Womble, Arkansas - The Record (Garland County Historical Society) 14:13 1973
Now to the other end of the line.
GURDON
The Missouri-Pacific Railroad Depot-Gurdon is a historic railroad station building at North 1st Street and East Walnut Street in Gurdon, Arkansas. The single-story masonry building was built c. 1917 by the Missouri-Pacific Railroad to house passenger and freight service facilities. It is built in the Mediterranean Renaissance style which was then popular for building such structures in Arkansas. It has a red clay tile roof, Italianate bracketing, and Baroque quoin molding.[2]
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[1]
Gurdon
Located about 85 miles south of Little Rock, Gurdon was founded in the late nineteenth century, one of many timber towns located along a railway. The town is famous for its role as the founding place of the International Concatenated Order of the Hoo Hoo, the oldest industrial fraternal organization in the nation.In 1880 the town was incorporated. Located on US 67, the town grew up around the railroad lines and timber industry, which continues to play an important role in the area’s economy. Early development of the town was tied to the arrival of the railroad to Clark County. Gurdon came to be because of its location at the intersection of several important lumbering railroads and it’s location near stands of timber.
Construction of railroads played a crucial role in the growth of the lumber industry. The town started as a construction camp on the Iron Mountain Railway, which was completed in 1873. Soon the railway constructed a branch to Camden leaving a main line from Gurdon which increased the regional centrality of town. The town was attractive as a mill site, allowing the town to participate in the rapid expansion of the lumber industry in the South. The small settlement was a junction for railway to Womble-Amity-Mt.Ida-Glenwood, and another to Camden-El Dorado-Northern Louisiana. 1968 marked final passenger service to the city.
The St. Louis Mill and Wood Cutter Co was one of the first businesses
in the city and was the parent company of the Gurdon Lumber Co. Today,
the city’s economy is based primarily on the timber industry.
Of historical significance is the Gurdon Jail, because of its association with early social development of the city. In 1888 mills in Gurdon, especially the Gurdon Lumber Co, exceeded the number of shipments of cut lumber of all other milling towns in Clark Co. combined. By this time, the population had approached about 1,000, mostly of those working at the mills. The growth of the town led to need for a jail. Arkadelphia, 17 miles away, had a large jail and major offenders were sent there. Typically only local offenders were sent to Gurdon. Constructed in 1907, it is one of the few intact surviving structures from this ‘boom’ era in the city’s history. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
The town is probably best known as being the founding place of the International Concatenated Order of the Hoo Hoo. This lumbermen's fraternity was founded in 1892 by a set of lumber industry workers stranded in town by rainstorms. They devised the social organization as a joke, and created colorful officer designations such as the “Grand Snark of the Universe”. The joke took hold as a social organization, with branches worldwide.
The name Hoo Hoo refers to a tuft of hair on the bald head of the first president, Charles McCarer. The number nine is important and the unconventional organization also incorporates many symbols from ancient Egypt. The Black Cat is the mascot of the order and in honor of the cat’s nine lives there are nine members of the board, annual meetings begin at the ninth hour on the ninth day of the ninth month, the original dues were 99 cents, the initiation fee was $9.99, and the membership was restricted to 9,999.
Elizabeth Taylor accepted the title of Miss Hoo Hoo in 1948. Two U.S. presidents have had membership in Hoo-Hoo. Theodore Roosevelt was given the prestigious membership number 999 for his work promoting the importance of forests. Warren G. Harding was inducted in 1905.
After its beginnings in town, the organization grew tremendously. The first club established outside the U.S. was founded in Canada in 1924, and other groups started forming around the world. In 1981, the organization moved its international headquarters from Boston (where it had been since 1970) to Gurdon and dedicated the museum that same year. The Museum and International Headquarters are located in a restored log house on Main Street.
A monument commemorating the Hoo-Hoo’s is located on North First Street. The monument features small statues of two black cats with their tails curled upward in the shape of the number 9. The monument, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999, gives visitors a brief history of the organization and those who have served in it. A bronze plaque, sculpted with Egyptian Revival engravings, was sculpted by noted artist George J. Zolnay, was completed in 1909. At that time it was affixed to a building, then occupying the site of the Hotel Hall. When the building was demolished in 1927, the plaque was moved to its present location and rededicated.
Aside from the Hoo Hoo’s, the city is also well known as being home to ‘The Gurdon Light’ an unexplained supernatural light based on local folklore. The light has been featured on the TV show Unsolved Mysteries. As lore goes, the light occurs in a wooded area by railroad tracks, and appears to observers as a light or lights hovering in the air. It has been described as being blue, green, white or orange and seems to be bobbing around as if on a cord. Its location varies within a select geographic area and witnesses have described it appearing at various times of the day or night. According to legend, the light originates from a lantern of a railroad worker who was killed when he fell into the path of a train. The man's head was separated from his body and never found. The light people see comes from his lantern as he searches for his head.
Before the red paint job: Sure wish I could get a side shot. That green looks familiar.
The present mill at Glenwood still has rail in place.
Stranded flat car and some other rail device.
Headed into town (going south from mill)
Why was this rail left in Glenwood.
GLENWOOD, yes it had a mill back in the day..
Sawmills came with A.L. Clark constructing a large mill that was later sold to T.W. Rosborough. A railroad and spurs were built to haul timber to the mill and boosted the growth of the region. Today the sawmill in Glenwood is still going full blast. Georgia-Pacific sold the mill and is now the Curt Bean Lumber Co. and is the largest employer in the area.
Early Twentieth Century
Redundant with extras.
Glenwood’s origins can be traced to a number of large commercial ventures that began about 1900. One was the building of the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad (G&FTS) along the Caddo through the northeastern corner of the county. The other concerned wealthy Texas and Missouri investors who desired access to the vast pine forests of the area.
Construction on the rail line began in 1905. In its wake, a number of new communities, most destined to be the location of large lumber mills, sprang up. Among these were Graysonia in Clark County, Rosboro and Glenwood in Pike County, and Caddo Gap and Womble in Montgomery County.
In 1907, the Caddo River Lumber Company, led by Mr. Thomas W. Rosborough, built a large mill a few miles north of Amity at a site named Rosboro. Soon, a second company, the A. L. Clark Lumber Company from Gilmore, Texas, purchased an old cotton field across the river from the old village of Rock Creek and began construction of an even larger sawmill. It was located a short distance from a newly opened railroad depot. About the same time, another timber company moved into the area from Louisiana.
With these new mills under construction and the railroad in full operation, two local businessmen, Curt Hays and Will Fagan, laid out a new town site on both sides of the depot. The business lots sold quickly, and a boomtown grew almost overnight. Glenwood, reflecting the beautiful location of the new community, was chosen for a name.
By July 1907, the new village, with a population at some 250, had obtained a post office. It quickly replaced the old office at Rock Creek. In April 1908, at the request of a number of local citizens, Glenwood became an incorporated town. By 1910, its population stood at 768.
In 1914, Glenwood received an additional economic boost when the Memphis, Dallas, and Gulf Railroad (MD&G) opened new tracks between Glenwood and Hot Springs, making the town a major rail junction as well as one of the centers of the lumber industry in the southern Ouachita Mountains.
By 1916, the community included several churches, a number of new businesses, a telephone system, and a new public “dipping vat,” where local farmers brought their livestock for dipping as part of the state’s tick eradication program. By 1920, almost 900 citizens lived in the community.
While Hays and Fagan were busy developing Glenwood proper, the A. L. Clark Lumber Company was building its own residential “town,” near its mill. It consisted of an area of large white frame houses for mill supervisors and office employees along Gilmer Street. Many smaller worker houses, painted red and white, were built along nearby Clay Street, sometimes called Candy Street.
In the fall of 1908, the company built a large frame community building near downtown; it was used for church services and a school. A few months later, the Glenwood Special School District was formed. The next year, a two-story brick building was constructed.
In the 1920s, Glenwood’s population continued to grow. Its importance as a transportation hub and a growing regional trade center was enhanced when what is now U.S. 70 was paved between Glenwood and Hot Springs and large tracts of land around the town were converted to profitable peach orchards.
The 1930s brought the Great Depression and hard times to Glenwood. With it came a disaster that very nearly spelled the death of the town itself. In 1922, the Caddo River Lumber Company purchased the A. L. Clark Company mill at Glenwood and expanded it. Within a few years, the new facility was humming with activity day and night. On a stormy night in June 1936, a lighting strike started a blaze that consumed most of the mill complex. Though the mill remained open for another eighteen months, the company did not consider rebuilding. Within a short while, it relocated its entire operation to Oregon and took many of the community’s leading families with it.
Glenwood survived because of a number of more modest lumber operations that sprang up in the wake of the destruction of the big mill. However, the town’s population declined to 854 in 1940 and 843 in 1950.
World War II through the Faubus Era
In 1940, the Arkansas Slate Manufacturing Company built a large mill north of Glenwood to produce roofing granules. In 1942, a new manganese processing plant was opened west of town. At the same time, a worldwide shortage of cinnabar (mercury) caused by World War II led to extensive mining of that mineral in the area. These mills and their work force gave a much-needed boost to the local economy.
During the late 1940s, nearby Bethel, Bonnerdale, and Rosboro schools consolidated with the Glenwood district, necessitating new public school facilities in 1951 and 1956.
Modern Era
The 1970s witnessed an aggressive campaign of industrial growth and annexation that brought the town’s population up to 1,402 by 1980. During this period, the Curt Bean Lumber Company, one of the nation’s largest independently owned lumber producers, located its lumber mill in Glenwood. During the 1990s, the Caddo River at Glenwood became one of the most popular canoeing streams in western Arkansas. The population stood at 1,354 in 1990. Beginning in 1994, the Glenwood Country Club’s golf course, host to the annual Dick Kelly Golf Classics, named for President Bill Clinton’s stepfather, was opened. In 1995, the Glenwood School district consolidated with that of nearby Amity to form the Centerpoint School District, with a new campus located at old Rosboro.
During the 1990s, the region’s flourishing poultry industry, begun several years earlier, attracted a sizeable influx of Hispanic immigrants who, as of 2010, make up more than twenty-two percent of Glenwood's population.
For additional information
“Glenwood, Arkansas, & Surrounding Area.” Glenwood, AR: Greater Glenwood Chamber of Commerce, 1997.
Hull, Clifton E. Shortline Railroads of Arkansas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969.
Pike County Heritage Club. Early History of Pike County, Arkansas: The First One Hundred Years. Murfreesboro, AR: Pike County Archives and History Society, 1978.
Caddo Gap
Missour Pacific. Notice the mile markers start at Norman instead of from the south at Smithton or Gurdon. This is backwards from the ASR Schedule. This is a privateer's rendering. (enough to make me crazy)
Modern Era
Arkansas Midland
Caddo Valley RR
---------------------------------------------------------
Caddo Valley Railroad (reporting mark CVYR) is a short-line railroad headquartered in Glenwood, Arkansas.
CVYR operates a 52-mile line in Arkansas from Gurdon, Arkansas (where it interchanges with Union Pacific) to Bird Mill, Arkansas.
The line was first owned by Missouri Pacific, a predecessor of Union Pacific, and was sold to Arkansas Midland Railroad (AKMD) in 1992, then in 2000 sold by AKMD to its present owners under a sale ordered by the Surface Transportation Board.
CVYR and AKMD are involved in a controversy regarding a planned sale of CVYR to Pioneer, a shortline operator. AKMD claims that, under the provisions of the sale, before the line can be sold to another party, AKMD must be given the first opportunity to repurchase it. A hearing was pending in May 2006.[1]
In September 2010, Bean Lumber of Glenwood, AR (the main customer & owner of the line) closed its doors. The CVYR has not provided service since that time. A rail has been rolled near the AR-53 crossing, and a red flag rendering the line out of service beyond that point.
Arkansas Midland has been providing service between the UP interchange and Arkansas Route 53 (northwest of town) to service the Georgia-Pacific saw mill on US 67. MM GP10 #7530, presumably owned by the Caddo Valley, remains in unserviceable condition at the old open air shop in Antoine, Arkansas. Supposedly everything has been sold to a scrapper.
Arkansas Midland
Arkansas Midland Railway Company, Inc. AKMD #77
Nature of Firm
AKMD operates 112 miles of track in Arkansas over five disconnected lines. One line runs from Mountain Pine through Hot Springs to a UP connection at Malvern, Arkansas, (33.3 miles). A second line runs from Helena to a connection with UP at Lexa, Arkansas, (12 miles). The third segment comprises two lines that connect with the UP at North Little Rock, Arkansas. One line runs 6.6 miles to Galloway and the other is 7.4 miles, consisting of the Carlisle Industrial Lead. The fourth line is from Warren to Dermott, Arkansas, (39.4 miles), with 5.6 miles of trackage rights to interchange at McGehee, Arkansas. The fifth line connects the UP McGehee Yard to Cypress Bend (10 miles) and includes the Potlach Spur (3.4 miles). Traffic consists of forest and grain products, aggregates, building materials, cottonseeds and chemicals.
History
The Mountain Pine line was built by the Hot Springs Railroad and opened January 25, 1876, as a 3-foot gauge line, Hot Springs Railroad was sold to the Choctow, Oklahoma & Gulf (Rock Island) in 1902. The Helena branch was built by the Iron Mountain & Helena Railroad chartered in 1879 and purchased by the St. Louis & Iron Mountain in 1882. The Galloway to North Little Rock line was a former Rock Island Line. These three lines were purchased from the MP by the current operator on February 23, 1992. The Carlisle Industrial Lead which is a former Rock Island line was leased to the current operators by the UP on August 11, 2000. The Warren branch was leased to the current operators on December 13, 2004. In 2011, AKMD reacquired a three-mile section from Gurdon, Arkansas, to MP 429.45 miles north of Gurdon.
Company Information
Mailing Address
Arkansas Midland Railway Company, Inc.
314 Reynolds Road, Bldg 41
Malvern, AR 72104
Arkansas Midland Railroad (1992)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arkansas Midland Railroad Arkansas Midland Railroad logo.png
Arkansas Midland Railroad system map.svg
Reporting mark AKMD
Locale Arkansas
Dates of operation 1992–
Track gauge 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Headquarters Malvern, Arkansas
The Arkansas Midland Railroad (reporting mark AKMD) is a Class III short-line railroad headquartered in Malvern, Arkansas.
AKMD operates 138 miles (222 km) of line in Arkansas consisting of seven disconnected branch lines and two sister railroads, the Prescott & Northwestern (PNW) and the Warren & Saline River (WSR). The AKMD branches were formerly part of the Union Pacific Railroad, or a predecessor, while the PNW and WSR lines were acquired from Potlatch Corporation. All branch lines connect (interchange traffic) with Union Pacific Railroad. AKMD also interchanges with BNSF in North Little Rock.
Hot Springs Branch: 33.3 mi (53.6 km) from Malvern, through Hot Springs, to Mountain Pine
North Little Rock Branch: 14.6 miles (23.5 km) from North Little Rock to Galloway (7.8 mi. former Cotton Belt, 6.8 mi (10.9 km). former Rock Island)
Warren Branch: 39.4 mi (63.4 km) from Warren to Dermott, with trackage rights over an additional 5.6 miles (9.0 km) to McGehee
Cypress Bend Branch: 11.2 mi (18.0 km) from McGehee to Cypress Bend
Helena Branch: 24.9 mi (40.1 km) from Lexa to Helena
Jacksonville Branch: 2.7 mi (4.3 km)
Prescott and Northwestern Railroad (PNW, affiliated): 5.7 mi (9.2 km)
Warren and Saline River Railroad (WSR, affiliated): 2.7 mi (4.3 km)
Gurdon Branch (emergency operation of a segment of the Caddo Valley Railroad): 3.1 mi (5.0 km)
AKMD traffic generally consists of forest and agricultural products, aggregates, aluminum, building materials and chemicals.
AKMD is a subsidiary of Pinsly Railroad Company, a holding company owning seven short-line railroads in the United States. The Hot Springs, Helena and Galloway branches are owned by AKMD (purchased in 1992); the Warren, Cypress Bend and Jacksonville branches are leased; the PNW and WSR are owned by Pinsly and operated by AKMD.
On December 5, 2014, Genesee & Wyoming filed a Notice of Exemption with the Surface Transportation Board to acquire AKMD (along with affiliates PNW and WSR) from Pinsly.[1]
Dardanelle and Russellville Railroad
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dardanelle and Russellville Railroad ChrisLitherlandDR.jpg
ALCO S-3 #19 undergoing maintenance in 2011
Reporting mark DR
Locale Arkansas
Dates of operation 1883–
Track gauge 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)
Headquarters Russellville, Arkansas
The Dardanelle and Russellville Railroad Company (reporting mark DR) is a Class III short-line railroad headquartered in Russellville, Arkansas.
DR operates a 4.8 mile line in Arkansas from Russellville (where it interchanges with Union Pacific) to a point beside the Arkansas River, across from Dardanelle, Arkansas. Current DR traffic generally consists of pulp board, plastics, and forest products. DR is currently owned by Arkansas Shortline Railroads, Inc., a short-line railroad holding company.
History
The line was initially chartered as the Dardanelle & Russellville Railway, and train operations began in August 1883.[1] After undergoing reorganization in 1900, operations continued as the Dardanelle & Russellville Railroad. When originally constructed, the railroad carried cotton and other agricultural products. The predominant traffic shifted to coal by 1900, thanks to extensive semi-anthracite coal production along the railroad. Coal production along the D&R ended in the mid-1950s when the last underground mines of McAlester Fuel Company were closed.
At one time, the railroad owned the Dardanelle Pontoon Bridge and Turnpike Company, which operated a pontoon bridge (for wagons and later automobiles, not trains) across the Arkansas River at Dardanelle. The D&R was also a leader in the trend for railroads to branch into other transportation modes, owning a highway subsidiary from 1919-1960. The highway subsidiary, Dardanelle Transfer Company, operated both bus and truck service over an expanded territory much larger than was served by the railroad itself.
References
*Hull, Clifton E. and Pollard, William A. (1995), The Dardanelle & Russellville Railroad, University of Central Arkansas Press, Conway, Arkansas. ISBN 9780944436189
Below are a few lawsuits, not as many as I thought as I'd repeated. You can actually get through them if you are so inclined. I was not.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Caddo Valley Railroad Company-Abandonment Exemption-in Pike and Clark Counties, AR
A Notice by the Transportation Department and the Surface Transportation Board on
11/16/2011
Publication Date:
11/16/2011
Agencies:
Department of Transportation
Surface Transportation Board
Document Type:
Notice
Document Citation:
76 FR 71124
Page:
71124-71125 (2 pages)
Agency/Docket Number:
Docket No. AB 1076 (Sub-No. 1X)
Document Number:
2011-29592
Document Details
Published Document
On October 27, 2011, Caddo Valley Railroad Company (CVRR) filed with the Surface
Transportation Board (Board) a petition under 49 U.S.C. 10502 for exemption from the
provisions of 49 U.S.C. 10903 to abandon a segment of the Norman Branch Line extending
between milepost 429.45, near Gurdon, and milepost 447, near Antoine, a distance of
17.55 miles, in Pike and Clark Counties, Ark. (the line).[1] The line traverses United
States Postal Service Zip Codes 71943 and 71922, and includes the stations of Summit
(milepost 433.1), Okolona (milepost 441.0), and Pike City Junction (milepost 446.5).
CVRR states that, based on information in CVRR's possession, the line does not contain
Federally granted rights-of-way. Any documentation in CVRR's possession will be made
available promptly to those requesting it.
The interest of railroad employees will be protected by the conditions set forth in
Oregon Short Line Railroad—Abandonment Portion Goshen Branch Between Firth & Ammon, in
Bingham & Bonneville Counties, Idaho, 360 I.C.C. 91 (1979).
By issuance of this notice, the Board is instituting an exemption proceeding pursuant
to 49 U.S.C. 10502(b). A final decision will be issued by February 14, 2012.
Any offer of financial assistance (OFA) under 49 CFR 1152.27(b)(2) will be due no later
than 10 days after service of a decision granting the petition for exemption. Each OFA
must be accompanied by a $1,500 filing fee. See 49 CFR 1002.2(f)(25).
All interested persons should be aware that, following abandonment of Start Printed
Page 71125rail service and salvage of the line, the line may be suitable for other
public use, including interim trail use. Any request for a public use condition under
49 CFR 1152.28 or for trail use/rail banking under 49 CFR 1152.29 will be due no later
than December 6, 2011. Each trail request must be accompanied by a $250 filing fee. See
49 CFR 1002.2(f)(27).
All filings in response to this notice must refer to Docket No. AB 1076 (Sub-No. 1X),
and must be sent to: (1) Surface Transportation Board, 395 E Street SW., Washington, DC
20423-0001; and (2) Richard H. Streeter, 5255 Partridge Lane NW., Washington, DC 20016.
Replies to the petition are due on or before December 6, 2011.
Persons seeking further information concerning abandonment procedures may contact the
Board's Office of Public Assistance, Governmental Affairs and Compliance at (202) 245-
0238 or refer to the full abandonment regulations at 49 CFR pt. 1152. Questions
concerning environmental issues may be directed to the Board's Office of Environmental
Analysis (OEA) at (202) 245-0305. Assistance for the hearing impaired is available
through the Federal Information Relay Service (FIRS) at 1-(800)-877-8339.
An environmental assessment (EA) (or environmental impact statement (EIS), if
necessary) prepared by OEA will be served upon all parties of record and upon any
agencies or other persons who commented during its preparation. Other interested
persons may contact OEA to obtain a copy of the EA (or EIS). EAs in these abandonment
proceedings normally will be made available within 60 days of the filing of the
petition. The deadline for submission of comments on the EA generally will be within 30
days of its service.
Board decisions and notices are available on our Web site at http://www.stb.dot.gov.
Decided: November 10, 2011.
By the Board, Rachel D. Campbell, Director, Office of Proceedings.
Jeffrey Herzig,
Clearance Clerk.
Footnotes
1. On November 9, 2011, CVRR filed a letter with the Board attaching a letter dated
October 7, 2011, from counsel for Arkansas Midland Railroad Company, Inc. (AKMD). AKMD
notes that CVRR acquired the Norman Branch, which includes the line at issue here, from
AKMD under the Board's feeder line statute at 49 U.S.C. 10907. See Caddo Antoine &
Little Mo. R.R.—Feeder Line Acquis.—Ark. Midland R.R. Co. Line Between Gurdon & Birds
Mill, Ark., 4 S.T.B. 326 (1999). AKMD further states that on September 29, 2011, AKMD
reacquired from CVRR the segment of the Norman Branch between milepost 426.88 in Gurdon
and milepost 429.45 north of Gurdon and, as part of the same transaction, waived its
statutory right of first refusal with respect to the rest of the Norman Branch. See 49
U.S.C. 10907(h).
Back to Citation
[FR Doc. 2011-29592 Filed 11-15-11; 8:45 am]
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CADDO ANTOINE AND LITTLE MISSOURI RAILROAD COMPANY GS v. Arkansas Midland Railroad Company, Incorporated, Intervenor.
CADDO ANTOINE AND LITTLE MISSOURI RAILROAD COMPANY GS v. Arkansas Midland Railroad Company, Incorporated, Intervenor.
United States Court of Appeals,Eighth Circuit.
CADDO ANTOINE AND LITTLE MISSOURI RAILROAD COMPANY; GS Roofing Products Company, Inc.; Beazer West, doing business as Gifford-Hill & Company, Inc.; Bean Lumber Company; Curt Bean Lumber Company; Barksdale Lumber Company, Inc., Petitioners, v. UNITED STATES of America; Surface Transportation Board, Respondents, Arkansas Midland Railroad Company, Incorporated, Intervenor.
Glenwood and Southern Railroad Company, Amicus Curiae. CADDO ANTOINE AND LITTLE MISSOURI RAILROAD COMPANY; Dardanelle & Russellville Railroad Company; GS Roofing Products Company, Inc., Beazer West doing business as Gifford-Hill & Company, Inc.; Bean Lumber Company; Curt Bean Lumber Company; Barksdale Lumber Company, Inc., Petitioners, v. UNITED STATES of America; Surface Transportation Board, Respondents. Glenwood and Southern Railroad Company, Amicus Curiae.
Nos. 95-2006, 95-2582.
Decided: September 13, 1996
Before FAGG, WOLLMAN, and BEAM, Circuit Judges.Richard Streeter, Washington D.C., argued (Mark J. Andrews and Robert S. Hargraves, on the brief), for petitioners. Laurence R. Latourette and Craig M. Keats, Washington, D.C., argued (Lisa M. Helpert, Robert B. Nicholson, John P. Fonte and Evelyn G. Kitay, on the brief), for respondent.
This case involves consolidated petitions for review of decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission (Commission).1
No. 95-2006 is a petition for review of the Commission's April 18, 1995, decision granting in part the application of the Caddo Antoine and Little Missouri Railroad Company to purchase under the feeder line development provisions of 49 U.S.C. § 10910 a 52.9-mile line of railroad located in southwestern Arkansas, known as the Norman Branch. Caddo Antoine and Little Missouri Railroad Company-Federal Line Acquisition-Arkansas Midland Railroad Company Line Between Gurdon and Birds Mill, AR, Finance Docket No. 32479 (April 18, 1995).
No. 95-2582 is a petition for review of the Commission's June 15, 1995, decision declining to extend a service order authorizing the Dardanelle and Russellville Railroad Company to operate over the Norman Branch.
I.
The petitioners are the Caddo Antoine and Little Missouri Railroad Company (CALM), five of the six shippers located on the Norman Branch, and Dardanelle and Russellville Railroad Company (D & R), which is an Arkansas-based short line railroad. Caddo Antoine and Little Missouri Railroad Company (CALM) is a non-carrier subsidiary of D & R. Both D & R and CALM are controlled by the five petitioners/shippers identified below. Arkansas Midland Railroad Company (Arkansas Midland), the intervenor in this action, is a subsidiary of the Massachusetts-based Pinsly Railroad Company, Inc.2 Arkansas Midland acquired ownership of the Norman Branch from the Union Pacific in February of 1992. In addition to the Norman Branch, Arkansas Midland consists of three additional branches: the Carlisle Branch, the Hot Springs Branch, and the Helena Branch, all of which are located within the state of Arkansas.
Since its completion in the early part of this century, the Norman Branch has been operated as a single line of railroad extending from its point of interchange with what was formerly the Missouri Pacific Railroad (now a part of the Union Pacific Railroad) at milepost 426.3 near Gurdon, Arkansas, to milepost 479.2 near Birds Mill, Arkansas.
On December 3, 1993, storm damage occurred at mileposts 475.9 and 477.2, near the northernmost tip of the Norman Branch. On December 16, 1993, Arkansas Midland announced an embargo of rail shipments to four of the six shippers on the Norman Branch: GS Roofing Products Company, Inc., Bean Lumber Company, Curt Bean Lumber Company, and Barksdale Lumber Company. On February 22, 1994, Arkansas Midland extended its embargo to terminate service to petitioner Beazer West, Inc. d/b/a Gifford-Hill & Company, which is located at milepost 446.6 on the Norman Branch. Arkansas Midland continued to provide service to the sixth shipper on the line, International Paper Company (International Paper), which is located at milepost 428.9 at the southernmost tip of the line, some 2.07 miles from the point of interchange with the Union Pacific line at Gurdon.
In response to the notice of embargo, the embargoed shippers entered into negotiations with Arkansas Midland and the Union Pacific in an attempt to have Arkansas Midland restore rail service on the remainder of the Norman Branch. The Union Pacific offered financial assistance in excess of $1.1 million in the form of increased car fees and track materials. The petitioner shippers offered financial assistance and intervened with Arkansas state officials to obtain funds for Arkansas Midland to use to make repairs to the line.
In addition to refusing to make the repairs or to restore service, Arkansas Midland filed a system diagram map (SDM) with the Commission on February 18, 1994, on which it designated the entire Norman Branch as being a candidate for abandonment. Thereafter, Arkansas Midland amended its SDM to modify the designation of the southernmost 3.7-mile portion of the line, on which International Paper is located. That portion of the line was changed from a category 1 status, which designates a line as being a candidate for immediate abandonment, to a category 5 status, meaning that operations would continue over that portion of the line. See 49 C.F.R. §§ 1152.10(b)(1) and (5).
In response to the prospect of losing railroad service, the five embargoed shippers took three related actions. First, they requested that CALM file a feeder line application in order to acquire the entire Norman Branch. Second, they asked CALM to file an emergency petition with the Commission seeking a directed service order that would allow CALM to begin immediate operations over the entire line. Finally, they filed a damage action against Arkansas Midland.
The feeder line application and the request for a directed service order were filed with the Commission on March 18, 1994.3 Because CALM was not aware of the amendment to Arkansas Midland's SDM when it filed its feeder line application, the application initially referred to 49 U.S.C. § 10910(b)(1)(A)(ii), which relates to lines designated for abandonment, as providing the basis for the acquisition of the entire Norman Branch. The application further indicated, however, that “CALM will seek a finding by the Commission that public convenience and necessity permit or require acquisition.”
Arkansas Midland filed a response opposing the request for a directed service order, referring to that portion of the Norman Branch line north of milepost 430.0 as the “northern segment.”
On March 28, 1994, the Commission issued an emergency service order pursuant to 49 U.S.C. § 11123(a)(1) authorizing the D & R and CALM to “enter upon and operate [Arkansas Midland's] Norman Branch.” The service order authorized D & R/CALM to operate over the full extent of the Norman Branch, but permitted it to provide service only to the five shippers located on the 49.2 miles of track located north of milepost 430.0. Arkansas Midland was authorized to continue serving International Paper, the sole shipper located on the 3.17-mile portion of the line between milepost 430.0 and the point of interchange with the Union Pacific Railroad. Thereafter, the service order, which was originally issued for a period of thirty days, was extended and was scheduled to expire at 11:59 p.m. on June 15, 1995.
On April 12, 1994, the Commission published its notice of acceptance of CALM's feeder line application in the Federal Register, 59 Fed.Reg. at 17400, establishing a deadline of May 12, 1994, for the receipt of competing applications.
In compliance with the notice, CALM filed comments and evidence in support of its showing that the public convenience and necessity required or permitted the sale of the entire Norman Branch. CALM alleged that if International Paper was not included among the shippers it could serve on the Norman Branch, it projected a net operating loss of $124,701, whereas it expected to achieve net annual operating income of $264,649 if it was permitted to acquire the entire Norman Branch and to serve all six shippers located thereon.4
The five embargoed shippers submitted statements in support of CALM's acquisition of the entire Norman Branch. They alleged that they had already suffered damages in excess of $650,000 because of failure to obtain rail service from Arkansas Midland and that they would be forced to shut down or severely curtail their operations if reliable rail service was not restored and maintained. International Paper filed a one-page statement saying that it would like to have Arkansas Midland continue to serve its plant rather than to have Arkansas Midland be forced to sell to CALM that portion of the Norman Branch that serves International Paper.
In its response to CALM's feeder line application, Arkansas Midland recited the worsening track conditions, declining car loads and revenues, and increasing losses it had experienced on the Norman Branch. It alleged that International Paper is the second largest shipper on Arkansas Midland's entire system, the loss of which would put Arkansas Midland at serious financial and operational risk. Included within Arkansas Midland's reply to CALM's application was a statement of Michael P. Root, the majority stockholder, president and director of the Glenwood & Southern Railroad Company (GSR), which set forth that GSR had entered into a lease and option to purchase agreement with Arkansas Midland to purchase and operate the Norman Branch from milepost 430.0 to milepost 479.2.
GSR filed a notice seeking an exemption from the otherwise applicable regulatory requirements to permit it to acquire and operate the Norman Branch. GSR and Arkansas Midland also filed a joint petition to terminate the earlier-issued service order permitting the D & R to operate the line. Thereafter, the Commission issued decisions ordering GSR not to consummate its proposed transaction with the Arkansas Midland, denying Arkansas Midland and GSR's motion to dismiss CALM's feeder line application, and rejecting GSR's notice of exemption.
In November 1994, GSR filed a competing feeder line application. On March 9, 1995, the Commission issued a decision, which has not been challenged on judicial review, affirming the decision of its Director, Office of Proceedings, that GSR had not sufficiently shown that it was a financially responsible person, as required by 49 U.S.C. § 10910(a).
The Commission concluded in its April 18, 1995, decision on CALM's feeder line application that the feeder line statute did not authorize it to direct the forced sale of the entire Norman Branch. It found that because the northern segment had been listed on Arkansas Midland's SDM as a category 1 candidate for abandonment and because service on that segment was inadequate, CALM was entitled to purchase that portion of the line under the provisions of section 10910(b)(1)(A)(ii). The Commission found that CALM had made a showing of financial responsibility sufficient to satisfy the Commission that it would be likely to be able to cover expenses for three years.
The Commission then considered the 3.7-mile southern segment of the line under the public convenience and necessity (PC & N) standard of section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i). Because CALM had submitted no PC & N evidence regarding the southern segment standing alone, the Commission granted the feeder line application only as to the northern segment. Because it believed that operations serving only the five shippers located north of milepost 430.0 would be incapable of sustaining an operating profit, CALM declined to acquire this truncated portion of the Norman Branch.
Following the entry of the Commission's decision, petitioners sought an extension of the service order under which D & R/CALM had been providing service during the pendency of CALM's feeder line application. In response, the Commission agreed to only a thirty-day extension. On May 17, 1995, GSR filed an ex parte notice of exemption to lease and operate the portion of the Norman Branch north of milepost 430.0. On May 31, 1995, petitioners filed a motion to have GSR's notice of exemption declared void. On the same day, CALM requested an extension of the service order pending completion of judicial review. On June 15, the Commission issued its decision granting only a fifteen-day extension and ordering CALM to clear the Norman Branch of its equipment and supplies and cease rail operations on the Norman Branch by 11:59 p.m., June 30, 1995. On June 29, 1995, we granted petitioners' motions for stay of the Commission's April 18 and June 15, 1995, decisions pending judicial review.
II.
The petitioners contend that the Commission erroneously and artificially bifurcated the Norman Branch into a “northern” and “southern” segment in an attempt to circumvent the otherwise logical conclusion that the entire Norman Branch is a “particular railroad line” as that term is used in section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i). They contend that the Commission's “two line” assumption is not only arbitrary but is at odds with the text of the statute, pointing out that although other portions of the statute contemplate transactions involving a “part” or a “portion” of a line, section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i) speaks only in terms of a “particular railroad line” and not in terms of a part or portion of a line. For example, sections 10903(a)(1) and (2) provide that a rail carrier may abandon “any part” or discontinue the operation over “any part” of its railroad lines. Sections 10905(b)(1), (d)(1), and (f)(4) relate to offers of financial assistance to maintain service on all or a “portion” or “part” of an abandoned railroad line. Section 10910(h) provides that a purchasing carrier may propose to sell or abandon “all or any portion of a purchased railroad line.”
Arkansas Midland, on the other hand, argues that the feeder line development program was never intended to give an adversary carrier a mechanism by which to force a rail carrier to sell a profitable segment of line which is adjacent to a line being abandoned.
III.
Concerned about the deteriorating rail service provided on some of the secondary railroad lines throughout the country, Congress enacted the Staggers Rail Act of 1980 (the Act). The Act is codified at 49 U.S.C. § 10910 and provides two methods whereby a line of railroad can be acquired other than through a mutually agreed upon sale and purchase. The relevant portions of the Act read as follows:
§ 10910. Railroad development
(a) In this section-
(1) “financially responsible person” means a person who
(A) is capable of paying the constitutional minimum value of the railroad line proposed to be acquired, and (B) is able to assure that adequate transportation will be provided over such line for a period of not less than 3 years. Such term includes a governmental authority but does not include a class I or a class II rail carrier.
․
(b)(1) When the Interstate Commerce Commission finds that-
(A)(i) the public convenience and necessity require or permit the sale of a particular railroad line under this section; or
(ii) a railroad line is on a system diagram map as required under section 10904 of this title, but the rail carrier owning such line has not filed an application to abandon such line under sections 10903 and 10904 of this title before an application to purchase such line, or any required preliminary filing with respect to such application, is filed under this section; and
(B) an application to purchase such line has been filed, in accordance with regulations required under subsection (k) of this section, by a financially responsible person, the Commission shall require the rail carrier owning the railroad line to sell such line to such financially responsible person at a price not less than the constitutional minimum value.
․
(c)(1) For purposes of this section, the Commission may determine that the public convenience and necessity require or permit the sale of a railroad line if the Commission determines, after a hearing on the record, that-
(A) the rail carrier operating such line refuses within a reasonable time to make the necessary efforts to provide adequate service to shippers who transport traffic over such line;
(B) the transportation over such line is inadequate for the majority of shippers who transport traffic over such line;
(C) the sale of such line will not have a significantly adverse financial effect on the rail carrier operating such line;
(D) the sale of such line will not have an adverse effect on the overall operational performance of the rail carrier operating such line; and
(E) the sale of such line will be likely to result in improved railroad transportation for shippers that transport traffic over such line.
․
Emphasis Added.5
Whether the difference between the descriptive terms “a particular railroad line,” as set forth in section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i), and “any part,” “portion,” or “part,” as used in the other statutes cited above, would be controlling in the absence of further circumstances, we need not say. Rather, as we conclude below, when viewed in the light of the history of the operation of the Norman Branch, the circumstances under which Arkansas Midland and the Commission bifurcated the line, and the legislative history of the feeder line development program, the term “a particular railroad line” in the circumstances of this case includes the Norman Branch in its entirety.
IV.
The legislative history of section 10910 explains Congress's purpose in enacting the feeder line development program provisions of the Act:
To provide shipper groups and government agencies an alternative to inadequate rail service and to preserve feeder lines prior to the total downgrading of such lines, the House amendment provides for a feeder line development program which would require a rail carrier to sell a railroad line to a financially responsible person at a price not less than the constitutional minimum, if the Commission makes a finding that the present or future public convenience and necessity required or permitted the abandonment or discontinuance of a railroad line, or if the Commission makes a finding that the transportation provided over a particular line is inadequate. Inadequate transportation is defined by five criteria. The Commission must affirmatively determine the existence of the conditions set forth in all five criteria as a prerequisite to the sale of a railroad line under this section. The burden of proving inadequacy of service is on the person filing to acquire the rail line.
․
The Conferees believe that the feeder line program will give shippers and communities an opportunity to insist upon adequate rail service. Where such service is not forthcoming the provision provides, through acquisition, a viable alternative to poor service or total abandonment.
H.Conf.Rep. No. 1430, 96th Cong., 2nd Sess. 124, reprinted in 1980 U.S.C.C.A.N. 4110, at 4156-57. (For a review of the circumstances leading to the enactment of the Act and the purposes it was designed to achieve, see Simmons v. I.C.C., 871 F.2d 702, 706-07 (7th Cir.1989).) As the Commission has recognized, “The overriding intent of the feeder line provisions is to preserve service over lines that may be abandoned or downgraded.” Sandusky County-Seneca County-City of Tiffin Port Authority-Feeder Line Application, 1990 WL 288059, *3 (I.C.C.).
V.
We undertake our review of the Commission's decision cognizant that “we must defer to the [Commission's] interpretation of the statutes or regulations it administers ‘unless there are compelling indications that the Commission's interpretation is incorrect.’ ” Simmons v. I.C.C., 871 F.2d at 705 (quoting Black v. I.C.C., 762 F.2d 106, 114-15 (D.C.Cir.1985)). We are to ask only whether, in those cases in which Congress has not directly addressed the precise question at hand, the Commission's action “is based on a permissible construction of the statute.” Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2782, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). With all due respect to the Commission, we conclude that its interpretation of section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i) in the circumstances of the present case is not a permissible construction of the statute, for, as we view the case, the Commission's interpretation frustrates rather than effectuates the purposes which the feeder line development program was designed to achieve.
As indicated above, section 10910 establishes alternate bases for permitting approval of feeder line applications where the owning carrier is either not providing adequate service or has identified the line in category 1 or 2 on its SDM as a candidate for abandonment but has not yet applied for abandonment. Although an SDM designation may eliminate the necessity for the applicant to prove inadequate service, we conclude that the statute does not preclude the Commission from considering an application under the PN & C standard simply because a line owner providing inadequate service to a majority of the shippers on the line decides to place a portion of the line on its SDM.
In its July 24, 1991, revision of its feeder railroad development rules, the Commission discontinued its automatic rejection policy for feeder line applications filed after the filing of an overlapping abandonment application, explaining that
[u]nder § 10910, a line is available for forced sale if either: (1) the owning carrier has identified the line in category 1 or 2 of its SDM as a candidate for abandonment but has not yet applied for abandonment authority (“SDM standard”); or (2) the operating carrier is not providing adequate service (“PC & N standard”). Under either standard the applicant must show that it is a financially responsible person and the Commission must establish the constitutional minimum value of the line.
Only the SDM standard explicitly excludes lines already subject to pending abandonment applications. Nothing in the statute precludes the PC & N standard from applying to lines already the subject of abandonment applications. There is no language to limit its use, as is the case with the separate SDM standard. Clearly, if Congress had intended that we reject all post abandonment feeder line applications, it easily could have included limiting language in the PC & N subsection. By its failure to do so, we may infer that Congress envisioned circumstances where it would be appropriate for us to consider and grant post-abandonment feeder line applications.
․
A rigid automatic rejection policy does not harmonize well with the rail transportation policies of preserving rail service and reducing regulatory barriers to entry, particularly when the abandonment application does not encompass all of the line sought in the feeder line application. Additionally, the automatic rejection policy leads to an undesirable filing race. This results from the line owner's ability to abort unilaterally a feeder line application by submitting an abandonment application first, even if it is filed just a few minutes before the feeder line application and covers only a small portion of a longer line covered by the feeder line application․
7 I.C.C. 902, 911, 913 (1991) (footnotes omitted).
We agree with petitioners that the Commission's position with respect to considering after-filed feeder line applications in abandonment cases is inconsistent with the position it has taken in the present case. The rejection of CALM's application to acquire the entire Norman Branch does not harmonize well with the policies of preserving rail service and reducing regulatory barriers to entry.
As we read the Commissioner's revised policy, it is designed to prevent what appears to have occurred in the present case, i.e., the owning carrier (Arkansas Midland) downgrades (by failing to maintain and repair its tracks) services over a portion of its line that it deems more expensive to operate, while maintaining service to a single shipper that it deems easier and more profitable to serve, and then files a SDM covering only the undesirable portion of the line shortly before the abandoned shippers are able to file a feeder line application. If the Commission's position is affirmed in this case, Arkansas Midland will have succeeded in lopping off service to the majority of its former shippers while “cherry-picking” the single, more easily served shipper on the remaining seven percent of the line it elected to retain. There may be situations in which such a result may ultimately obtain, as, for example, where no carrier files an application to acquire the portion of the line sought to be abandoned. But that is not the situation here, where CALM desires to acquire a line that from the date of its construction has been operated as a unitary line of railroad.
The Norman Branch presents the type of situation that the feeder line development program was designed to address. Arkansas Midland, for whatever reasons of its own, apparently overstated the damages resulting from the December 3, 1993, storm (CALM alleges that the storm damage was minimal and was repaired in less than four hours once it and D & R were authorized to commence operations over the line). Rather than try to repair this relatively minor damage, Arkansas Midland used the damage as a justification for embargoing further shipments on the greater portion of the line, leaving the petitioner shippers to fend for themselves. Accordingly, in light of CALM's application to provide service over the entire length of the Norman Branch, a line that had historically been operated as a unitary operation, the Commission should have treated the entirety of the Norman Branch as “a particular railroad line” and thus have reviewed CALM's application under the PN & C standard of section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i) rather than under (A)(ii).
The Commission contends that its decisions to segment lines designated for abandonment have been consistently endorsed by the courts. For example, in Futurex Industries, Inc. v. I.C.C., 897 F.2d 866, 870-73 (7th Cir.1990), the court held that the Commission's decision to approve the abandonment of a 14.58-mile segment of track was not arbitrary or capricious. In reaching this conclusion, the court noted that:
When segmentation of transportation lines is involved, we consider whether the segmentation satisfies three conditions: (1) does the proposed segment have logical termini?; (2) does the segment have substantially independent utility?; and (3) will abandonment of the disputed segment foreclose alternate treatment of the remaining segments? The satisfaction of these three criteria tends to ensure that carriers will not abuse the out-of-service exemption by carving out one segment of a line in an attempt to make the remainder of the line useless and subject imminently to abandonment. We must, of course, be vigilant to detect and restrain the latter phenomenon should it appear.
Id. at 872 (footnote and citations omitted). In Indiana Sugars, Inc. v. I.C.C., 694 F.2d 1098 (7th Cir.1982), the court held that the Commission acted arbitrarily and capriciously in not bifurcating from a proposed 42.89 mile abandonment of a seven-mile segment of track on which a showing of serious shipper need had been established.
We agree with the petitioners that neither of those holdings controls our decision in the present case. To say that the Commission was warranted in segmenting a portion of line in one case and was not warranted in not segmenting a portion of line in another is hardly the same that it must segment in all cases. The Commission itself has acknowledged that its analytical focus should “be on the ultimate issue: whether abandonment of one segment would foreclose the viability of contiguous segments, making their eventual abandonment a foregone conclusion.” Central Michigan Railway Co.-Abandonment-East of Ionia to West of Owosso-In Michigan, 8 I.C.C.2d 166, 173 (1991).
Although the Commission cites Cheney Railroad Co. v. I.C.C., 902 F.2d 66 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 985, 111 S.Ct. 519, 112 L.Ed.2d 530 (1990), in support of its decision to segment the Norman Branch, we conclude that that case has little relevance to the facts of the present case. Cheney involved a line of railroad that had been designated for abandonment in its entirety. Cheney filed an application to purchase the entire route. Tyson Foods filed an application to purchase only the 1.61-mile segment on which its plant was located. The question for decision was whether the Commission was required to consider the applications only in the order received and to accept the first qualifying application filed, or whether it could divide the line between applicants. The Commission's decision to do the latter was upheld. Cheney involved an abandonment, however, and thus was governed by the provisions of section 10910(b)(1)(A)(ii), rather than (A)(i). In light of our holding that the Commission should have considered CALM's application to purchase the entire Norman Branch under the PN & C provisions of (A)(i), we find Cheney to be inapposite. We do note, however, the Cheney court's approval of the Commission's reasoning that to consider applications one at a time might delay transfer of a line, which “ ‘would be contrary to the purposes of the feeder line development program, one of which is to preserve feeder lines.’ ” Cheney, 902 F.2d at 69 (quoting 5 I.C.C.2d 250, 254 (1989)). The Cheney court went on to characterize the Commission's decision as “both reasonable in itself and faithful to a Staggers Act objective ‘to preserve [rail] service to protect existing shippers.’ ” Id. (quoting Simmons v. I.C.C., 697 F.2d 326, 329 (D.C.Cir.1982)). If, as the Cheney court noted, and as we have found, the purpose of the feeder line development program is to preserve feeder lines and to preserve service to existing shippers, then to segment the Norman Branch so as to deny CALM the right to bid for the entire line under the provisions of (A)(i) would be to frustrate those purposes in light of the evidence that the revenue from the northern segment will never be adequate to preserve the line and to protect the five shipper petitioners. In a word, what the Commission has done in this case is that which it said in Central Michigan Railway Co. it should guard against: a segmentation of lines that would have the effect of foreclosing the viability of contiguous segments, making their eventual abandonment a foregone conclusion.
In reaching this conclusion, we have considered Arkansas Midland's contention that it will suffer grievous financial loss that will jeopardize the remainder of its rail line operations if it is required to sell the 3.7-mile portion of the line serving International Paper. That argument, however, will be a factor to be taken into account when the Board considers CALM's application in the light of the five criteria set forth in section 10910(c)(1). Likewise, it will be for the Board to determine, as it did with respect to CALM's ability to operate the northern 49.2-mile segment of the Norman Branch, whether CALM has the financial resources to operate the entire Norman Branch.
Our interpretation of section 10910 may strike some as reflecting a utilitarian view of the law-the greatest good for the greatest number of shippers. Nevertheless, we conclude that the words “a particular railroad line,” when viewed in the light of the history of the Norman Branch, the purposes of the feeder line development program, and the circumstances of this case, must be read to describe the entirety of the Norman Branch. Thus, on remand the Board must consider under the provisions of section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i) CALM's application to purchase the entire line. What decision the Board may reach, we do not know. In any event, we are satisfied that our holding, narrow as it is, will not result in the widespread depredation of the weak by the strong in the short line railroad industry.
VI.
In No. 95-2006, we reverse the Commission's decision and remand the case to the Board for further proceedings consistent with the views set forth in this opinion.
In No. 95-2582, we direct the Board to extend the service order authorizing CALM/D & R to continue providing service over the Norman Branch pending disposition of CALM's application to purchase the entire Norman Branch.
FOOTNOTES
1. Section 101 of the ICC Termination Act of 1995, Pub.L. No. 104-88 (effective January 1, 1996), abolished the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Section 201 of that Act established the Surface Transportation Board. Section 204(c)(2) provides that the Board shall continue any suit brought by or against the ICC to the extent the suit involves ICC functions that have been transferred to the Board.For ease of reference, we will use the term “Commission” throughout the opinion when we refer to past events, and we will use the term “Board” when we discuss actions to be taken on remand.
2. The Pinsly Railroad Company, Inc. also controls the following short line railroads: Florida Central Railroad, Florida Midland Railroad Company, Florida Northern Railroad, Greenville & Northern Railway Company, and Pioneer Valley Railroad.
3. After notification by the Commission that CALM was not eligible to apply for a directed service order because it was not yet an operating railroad, D & R was substituted as the operating carrier for purposes of the emergency order.
4. Indeed, CALM's predictions may have already been proved to be correct, for on August 27, 1996, we entered an order granting the emergency motion filed by the petitioner shippers authorizing them to engage an alternative carrier on the Norman Branch, D & R having advised the shippers that because it had lost more than $100,000 during the first seven months of 1996 operating the Norman Branch, it intended to cease operations on August 30, 1996.
5. Sections 10903 and 10904 of Title 49 read as follows:§ 10903. Authorizing abandonment and discontinuance of railroad lines and rail transportation(a) A rail carrier providing transportation subject to the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission under subchapter I of chapter 105 of this title may-(1) abandon any part of its railroad lines; or(2) discontinue the operation of all rail transportation over any part of its railroad lines;only if the Commission finds that the present or future public convenience and necessity require or permit the abandonment or discontinuance. In making the finding, the Commission shall consider whether the abandonment or discontinuance will have a serious, adverse impact on rural and community development.․§ 10904. Filing and procedure for applications to abandon or discontinue(a)(1) An application for a certificate of abandonment or discontinuance under section 10903 of this title, and a notice of intent to abandon or discontinue, must be filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission.․(e)(2) Each rail carrier shall maintain a complete diagram of the transportation system operated, directly or indirectly, by the carrier. The carrier shall submit to the Commission and publish amendments to its diagram that are necessary to maintain the accuracy of the diagram. The diagram shall-(A) include a detailed description of each of its railroad lines potentially subject to abandonment; and(B) identify each railroad line for which the carrier plans to file an application for a certificate under subsection (a) of this section.
WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.
Of historical significance is the Gurdon Jail, because of its association with early social development of the city. In 1888 mills in Gurdon, especially the Gurdon Lumber Co, exceeded the number of shipments of cut lumber of all other milling towns in Clark Co. combined. By this time, the population had approached about 1,000, mostly of those working at the mills. The growth of the town led to need for a jail. Arkadelphia, 17 miles away, had a large jail and major offenders were sent there. Typically only local offenders were sent to Gurdon. Constructed in 1907, it is one of the few intact surviving structures from this ‘boom’ era in the city’s history. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
The town is probably best known as being the founding place of the International Concatenated Order of the Hoo Hoo. This lumbermen's fraternity was founded in 1892 by a set of lumber industry workers stranded in town by rainstorms. They devised the social organization as a joke, and created colorful officer designations such as the “Grand Snark of the Universe”. The joke took hold as a social organization, with branches worldwide.
The name Hoo Hoo refers to a tuft of hair on the bald head of the first president, Charles McCarer. The number nine is important and the unconventional organization also incorporates many symbols from ancient Egypt. The Black Cat is the mascot of the order and in honor of the cat’s nine lives there are nine members of the board, annual meetings begin at the ninth hour on the ninth day of the ninth month, the original dues were 99 cents, the initiation fee was $9.99, and the membership was restricted to 9,999.
Elizabeth Taylor accepted the title of Miss Hoo Hoo in 1948. Two U.S. presidents have had membership in Hoo-Hoo. Theodore Roosevelt was given the prestigious membership number 999 for his work promoting the importance of forests. Warren G. Harding was inducted in 1905.
After its beginnings in town, the organization grew tremendously. The first club established outside the U.S. was founded in Canada in 1924, and other groups started forming around the world. In 1981, the organization moved its international headquarters from Boston (where it had been since 1970) to Gurdon and dedicated the museum that same year. The Museum and International Headquarters are located in a restored log house on Main Street.
A monument commemorating the Hoo-Hoo’s is located on North First Street. The monument features small statues of two black cats with their tails curled upward in the shape of the number 9. The monument, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999, gives visitors a brief history of the organization and those who have served in it. A bronze plaque, sculpted with Egyptian Revival engravings, was sculpted by noted artist George J. Zolnay, was completed in 1909. At that time it was affixed to a building, then occupying the site of the Hotel Hall. When the building was demolished in 1927, the plaque was moved to its present location and rededicated.
Aside from the Hoo Hoo’s, the city is also well known as being home to ‘The Gurdon Light’ an unexplained supernatural light based on local folklore. The light has been featured on the TV show Unsolved Mysteries. As lore goes, the light occurs in a wooded area by railroad tracks, and appears to observers as a light or lights hovering in the air. It has been described as being blue, green, white or orange and seems to be bobbing around as if on a cord. Its location varies within a select geographic area and witnesses have described it appearing at various times of the day or night. According to legend, the light originates from a lantern of a railroad worker who was killed when he fell into the path of a train. The man's head was separated from his body and never found. The light people see comes from his lantern as he searches for his head.
Jamie
Morgan
Arkansas
History
Dr.
Wendy Richter
The Gurdon Jail
The construction of the
railroads enabled the birth and growth of the timber industry here in Clark County. As is to be expected, with
industry comes community and the birth of the City of Gurdon. Gurdon began as a construction camp on the
Iron Mountain Railway (IMR) which was completed in the early 1870s, most likely
1873. From the main line there in
Gurdon, the IMR soon completed a branch to Camden which only added to the
activity and regional centrality of Gurdon.
With the completion of the Gurdon-Fort Smith railway by 1906 Gurdon was
connected to untouched timber resources in Montgomery County and other timber
operations throughout the Ouachita Forest.
The forests around Gurdon, especially to the Northwest, contained huge
stands of yellow pine which was very well suited for a rapidly growing and
building nation. Most of Clark County
participated in the timber industry but Gurdon took the lead. In 1888 Gurdon lumber mills shipped a total
of 4,178 carloads whereas the lumber mills of Arkadelphia, Smithton, Beirne,
Whelen, and Curtis combined only shipped a total of 3,346 carloads. This
industrial development led to commercial development so that by 1888 Gurdon
boasted a population of about 1,000, most of whom were employed by the mills. There were enough residents and visitors that
Gurdon was able to support six general stores, groceries, meat markets, barber
shops, mechanics’ shops, two hotels, a livery stable, a weekly newspaper, a
post office, and several churches. Four
physicians found sufficient clientele, and by 1900 there were also cotton gins,
a brick company, an ice plant, a bank, and several other “similar
conveniences”.
With all this activity and such
rapid growth, it comes as no surprise that law enforcement and a jail would
soon be needed. Some people say that the
Gurdon jail was built in 1897 because a map from that year shows a structure of
identical plan in the exact same location labeled “lockup”. The more accepted date, however, is
1907. It was designed and constructed by
M. D. Lowe, the co-owner of the Gurdon Brick Company who also designed the Old
Bank of Amity. It is a single story,
gable roof, red brick masonry structure with a simple rectangular floor plan. On the Eastern and Western sides there is a
small, central horizontal window and the North side has two of these windows
which are distributed one per cell. The
South side has two entries, a wood door on the Western side that is original to
the structure and a metal door on the Eastern side that was added when a
partition was added down the middle of the building and a second cell
created. It has a strip tongue-in-groove
wooden ceiling, original to the structure and early, if not original toilet
fixtures. It was typically used for
local offenders only (speeders and the occasional town drunk) while “outsiders”
and major offenders were sent seventeen miles Northeast up the road to the
large jail in Arkadelphia. Every road
leading into Gurdon had a sign that read “Drive slow, see our town. Drive fast,
see our jail.” The speed limit was
twelve miles per hour except around corners where it was eight miles per
hour. At some point in the jail’s life a
concrete floor was added to prevent standing water and the roof was replaced
with an exact duplicate. It is located
on W. Joslyn St. and was restored in 1985.
On Nov. 12, 1989 the National Park Service certified it as a national
historic site and placed it on the National Register of
Historic Places. It is no longer in use
and currently vacant but is one of the community’s few intact and surviving
structures from Gurdon’s “boom” era. The
jail finds its historical significance in the areas of law, exploration and
settlement, and social history.
MAUDIN (mentioned from above) Maudin was not on the Norman Branch. It was near Mt.Ida.
So, how did logs get to the Norman Branch mills? That below.
So, how did logs get to the Norman Branch mills? That below.
Mauldin or Mauldin Logging Camp is a ghost town in Montgomery County, Arkansas, United States. Established in 1918 by Billy Mauldin in cooperation with Thomas Rosborough, it became heavily populated by 1922 by workers drawn to industries cutting and processing virgin timber in the area. It was located between Mount Ida and Pencil Bluff.
Below is the Mauldin line exiting Norman in 1942.
This on Mauldin.
More Mauldin (a place on 270 with 2 ponds)
Mauldin existed from about 1922 to 1933 and was once a thriving little company town with a company store called the 'Commissionary", business office, church, seven month one-room school, accommodation house, picture show and post office. Located between Pencil Bluff and Mt Ida it was established to house the workers and the mill. The Caddo River Lumber Company had acquired much land in western and northern Montgomery County so built a railroad in 1921 from Womble (Norman) through the Gaston Settlement on the upper South Fork to the future town of Mauldin. The loggers worked together in pairs using cross-cut saws. The logs were hauled the to the hardwood sawmill in Mauldin by teams of mules or by spur engines trains that traveled the railroad spurs that criss-crossed the hills that also hauled the men to the forest for a hard day's work. Pine logs where shipped by steam train to Glenwood and Rosboro mills in Pike County. The old Billy Mauldin house was used to house the first family that moved to the lumber camp.
There were superintendents, foremen, engineers and loader operators lived in two-three bedroom homes while the mill workers and loggers lived in smaller two roomed vertical striped pattern board homes built along the railroad and paid $5.00/month rental. The houses were built so they could be moved on flatbed cars. There was a school house and a doctor. Larger families rented two homes and enclosed the area in between. The workers had no job security, health benefits, paid vacation or retirement benefits in the1920s but managed to support their families. After the land was cleared cut The Caddo River Lumber Company sold the majority of the land to the US Forest Service.
The rails leaving Norman went to Mauldin.
History
Below is the Mauldin line exiting Norman in 1942.
This on Mauldin.
More Mauldin (a place on 270 with 2 ponds)
Mauldin existed from about 1922 to 1933 and was once a thriving little company town with a company store called the 'Commissionary", business office, church, seven month one-room school, accommodation house, picture show and post office. Located between Pencil Bluff and Mt Ida it was established to house the workers and the mill. The Caddo River Lumber Company had acquired much land in western and northern Montgomery County so built a railroad in 1921 from Womble (Norman) through the Gaston Settlement on the upper South Fork to the future town of Mauldin. The loggers worked together in pairs using cross-cut saws. The logs were hauled the to the hardwood sawmill in Mauldin by teams of mules or by spur engines trains that traveled the railroad spurs that criss-crossed the hills that also hauled the men to the forest for a hard day's work. Pine logs where shipped by steam train to Glenwood and Rosboro mills in Pike County. The old Billy Mauldin house was used to house the first family that moved to the lumber camp.
There were superintendents, foremen, engineers and loader operators lived in two-three bedroom homes while the mill workers and loggers lived in smaller two roomed vertical striped pattern board homes built along the railroad and paid $5.00/month rental. The houses were built so they could be moved on flatbed cars. There was a school house and a doctor. Larger families rented two homes and enclosed the area in between. The workers had no job security, health benefits, paid vacation or retirement benefits in the1920s but managed to support their families. After the land was cleared cut The Caddo River Lumber Company sold the majority of the land to the US Forest Service.
The rails leaving Norman went to Mauldin.
History
William W. Mauldin, known as Billy Mauldin, was born in Greer County, Texas, and in 1906 had homesteaded 160 acres (0.65 km2) where Mauldin would later be located. Billy Mauldin worked in cooperation with Thomas Whitaker "Whit" Rosborough, who had formed the Caddo River Timber Company in 1906, when he started the town of Rosboro, in Pike County. The town of Mauldin first began heavy production of timber in 1922. It was, like Graysonia, Arkansas, a "company-owned town", but did have a post office, school, church, and a large number of shotgun houses, along with business offices. The Caddo River Lumber Company built a railroad line from Womble (now Norman, Arkansas) to Mauldin, through the Gaston Settlement. The pine timber was shipped via train to mills in Glenwood and Rosboro, the latter of which was Rosborough's main mill.
For a time the town thrived. But the company, functioning on a "cut and move" theory, packed up and disassembled the entire town almost overnight, in 1933, having cut all the virgin timber in the immediate area. The town had two 1-acre (4,000 m2) ponds used to float logs. The ponds still exist today, located just outside Mount Ida on Arkansas Highway 270. Nothing remains today short of a few concrete blocks where the mill once stood, and the two ponds. Both ponds were turned into a fish hatchery in 1940. There is a vacant field to the side of the ponds where the town once stood. All the larger buildings were torn down, while the smaller ones were moved to a new site near Forester, in Scott County.
The Caddo River Lumber Company later sold the majority of the land they owned there to the US Forest Service. In 1939 Thomas Rosborough moved his entire operation to the northwest, settling in Springfield, Oregon, and taking with him large numbers of loyal employees. Today his company, called "Rosboro", is one of the only fully integrated timber operators in the United States. It is also one of the largest private timberland holders of the Pacific Northwest.
A few more tour pictures. Leaving Smithton.
The mill at Birstill, the last remaining rail serviced mill on the branch.
Continuing north.
The end.
Under Eye 30.
The warning lights are still there.
The rails are preserved in the blacktop.
A lone warning sign remains.
Antoine mill location. Gone to Oregon.
Nice school sits by the ponds.
Glenwood's depot. The caboose has been recently painted red, not the original color. That below.
For a time the town thrived. But the company, functioning on a "cut and move" theory, packed up and disassembled the entire town almost overnight, in 1933, having cut all the virgin timber in the immediate area. The town had two 1-acre (4,000 m2) ponds used to float logs. The ponds still exist today, located just outside Mount Ida on Arkansas Highway 270. Nothing remains today short of a few concrete blocks where the mill once stood, and the two ponds. Both ponds were turned into a fish hatchery in 1940. There is a vacant field to the side of the ponds where the town once stood. All the larger buildings were torn down, while the smaller ones were moved to a new site near Forester, in Scott County.
The Caddo River Lumber Company later sold the majority of the land they owned there to the US Forest Service. In 1939 Thomas Rosborough moved his entire operation to the northwest, settling in Springfield, Oregon, and taking with him large numbers of loyal employees. Today his company, called "Rosboro", is one of the only fully integrated timber operators in the United States. It is also one of the largest private timberland holders of the Pacific Northwest.
A few more tour pictures. Leaving Smithton.
The mill at Birstill, the last remaining rail serviced mill on the branch.
Continuing north.
The end.
Under Eye 30.
The warning lights are still there.
The rails are preserved in the blacktop.
A lone warning sign remains.
Antoine mill location. Gone to Oregon.
Nice school sits by the ponds.
Glenwood's depot. The caboose has been recently painted red, not the original color. That below.
Before the red paint job: Sure wish I could get a side shot. That green looks familiar.
The present mill at Glenwood still has rail in place.
Stranded flat car and some other rail device.
Headed into town (going south from mill)
Why was this rail left in Glenwood.
GLENWOOD, yes it had a mill back in the day..
Sawmills came with A.L. Clark constructing a large mill that was later sold to T.W. Rosborough. A railroad and spurs were built to haul timber to the mill and boosted the growth of the region. Today the sawmill in Glenwood is still going full blast. Georgia-Pacific sold the mill and is now the Curt Bean Lumber Co. and is the largest employer in the area.
Glenwood is located in Pike County and is around 30 miles west of Hot Springs.
The city was established in 1909.
The city is located near the Caddo River in the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains. Its origins can be traced to a number of ventures that began in the 1900’s including the building of the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad (G&FTS).
Construction on this rail line began in 1905 and a number of new communities, including Glenwood, were a result of this venture. (note the dates flounder around)
In 1907, the Caddo River Lumber Company built a large mill at Rosboro. Soon a few more companies moved into the area near a railroad depot in the town. With new mills under construction and the railroad in operation, two businessmen, Curt Hays and Will Fagan, laid out a new town site (Glenwood) on both sides of the depot. The town grew almost overnight.
A few years later, the Memphis, Dallas, and Gulf Railroad (MD&G) opened new tracks between Glenwood and Hot Springs. This made the town a major rail junction and one of the centers of the lumber industry in the southern Ouachita Mountains. The population of the area continued to grow when A. L. Clark Lumber Company built its own residential “town” for employees near its mill.
Do you remember that the MD&G RR later took over the route of the Caddo and Choctaw RR? It was built by the Caddo Lumber Co.
Me: I looked up Memphis, Dallas & Gulf RR and got this.
{The Memphis, Dallas and Gulf Railroad was initially incorporated in 1906 as the Memphis, Paris, and Gulf, with plans for a rail line to run from Nashville, Arkansas, to Memphis, Tennessee, and Paris, Texas. The railroad's name changed in 1910 when the Nashville Lumber Company merged with the Grayson-McLeod Lumber Company. The railroad served mills and logging camps in southwest Arkansas while also carrying passengers. Financial difficulties after World War I resulted in foreclosure for the line in 1922.}
Continuing:
In 1922, the Caddo River Lumber Company purchased the A. L. Clark Company mill and expanded it. In 1936, a lighting strike started a fire that destroyed most of this mill complex. Though the mill remained open for over a year, the company did not plan to rebuild the complex. Soon, the company relocated its entire operation to Oregon, taking many of the town’s prominent families with it. The town was able to survive the exodus of people due to a number of lumber operations that sprang up in the wake of the disaster.
In 1942, a new manganese processing plant was opened west of town. At the same time, a global shortage of mercury caused by World War II led to mining of that mineral in the area. These mills and their work force gave a boost to the local economy.
In the 1970s Curt Bean Lumber Company, one of the nation’s largest independently owned lumber producers, located its lumber mill in town. In 1994, the Glenwood Golf Club & Lodge was opened. Today, the population in town is around 2,100. The town is near many recreational outlets such as the Caddo River and the Ouachita National Forest. The town is also near Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Mount Ida and Daisy State Park. Glenwood is centrally located between three major lakes: Greeson, Ouachita, and DeGray.
The city was established in 1909.
The city is located near the Caddo River in the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains. Its origins can be traced to a number of ventures that began in the 1900’s including the building of the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad (G&FTS).
Construction on this rail line began in 1905 and a number of new communities, including Glenwood, were a result of this venture. (note the dates flounder around)
In 1907, the Caddo River Lumber Company built a large mill at Rosboro. Soon a few more companies moved into the area near a railroad depot in the town. With new mills under construction and the railroad in operation, two businessmen, Curt Hays and Will Fagan, laid out a new town site (Glenwood) on both sides of the depot. The town grew almost overnight.
A few years later, the Memphis, Dallas, and Gulf Railroad (MD&G) opened new tracks between Glenwood and Hot Springs. This made the town a major rail junction and one of the centers of the lumber industry in the southern Ouachita Mountains. The population of the area continued to grow when A. L. Clark Lumber Company built its own residential “town” for employees near its mill.
Do you remember that the MD&G RR later took over the route of the Caddo and Choctaw RR? It was built by the Caddo Lumber Co.
Me: I looked up Memphis, Dallas & Gulf RR and got this.
{The Memphis, Dallas and Gulf Railroad was initially incorporated in 1906 as the Memphis, Paris, and Gulf, with plans for a rail line to run from Nashville, Arkansas, to Memphis, Tennessee, and Paris, Texas. The railroad's name changed in 1910 when the Nashville Lumber Company merged with the Grayson-McLeod Lumber Company. The railroad served mills and logging camps in southwest Arkansas while also carrying passengers. Financial difficulties after World War I resulted in foreclosure for the line in 1922.}
Continuing:
In 1922, the Caddo River Lumber Company purchased the A. L. Clark Company mill and expanded it. In 1936, a lighting strike started a fire that destroyed most of this mill complex. Though the mill remained open for over a year, the company did not plan to rebuild the complex. Soon, the company relocated its entire operation to Oregon, taking many of the town’s prominent families with it. The town was able to survive the exodus of people due to a number of lumber operations that sprang up in the wake of the disaster.
In 1942, a new manganese processing plant was opened west of town. At the same time, a global shortage of mercury caused by World War II led to mining of that mineral in the area. These mills and their work force gave a boost to the local economy.
In the 1970s Curt Bean Lumber Company, one of the nation’s largest independently owned lumber producers, located its lumber mill in town. In 1994, the Glenwood Golf Club & Lodge was opened. Today, the population in town is around 2,100. The town is near many recreational outlets such as the Caddo River and the Ouachita National Forest. The town is also near Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Mount Ida and Daisy State Park. Glenwood is centrally located between three major lakes: Greeson, Ouachita, and DeGray.
Glenwood (Pike County), on U.S. Highway 70 west of Hot Springs (Garland County), is nestled in a bend of the Caddo River with a spectacular view of Arkansas’s Ouachita Mountains. It lies in what was once rated as the “best timber country in western Arkansas” and was the home of Arkansas poet, journalist, and humorist, Graham Burnham, publisher of the Glenwood Newspress and the Houn’Dog. Glenwood is also the location of historic Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, the oldest active church in the area, organized in August of 1848.
Early Twentieth Century
Redundant with extras.
Glenwood’s origins can be traced to a number of large commercial ventures that began about 1900. One was the building of the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad (G&FTS) along the Caddo through the northeastern corner of the county. The other concerned wealthy Texas and Missouri investors who desired access to the vast pine forests of the area.
Construction on the rail line began in 1905. In its wake, a number of new communities, most destined to be the location of large lumber mills, sprang up. Among these were Graysonia in Clark County, Rosboro and Glenwood in Pike County, and Caddo Gap and Womble in Montgomery County.
In 1907, the Caddo River Lumber Company, led by Mr. Thomas W. Rosborough, built a large mill a few miles north of Amity at a site named Rosboro. Soon, a second company, the A. L. Clark Lumber Company from Gilmore, Texas, purchased an old cotton field across the river from the old village of Rock Creek and began construction of an even larger sawmill. It was located a short distance from a newly opened railroad depot. About the same time, another timber company moved into the area from Louisiana.
With these new mills under construction and the railroad in full operation, two local businessmen, Curt Hays and Will Fagan, laid out a new town site on both sides of the depot. The business lots sold quickly, and a boomtown grew almost overnight. Glenwood, reflecting the beautiful location of the new community, was chosen for a name.
By July 1907, the new village, with a population at some 250, had obtained a post office. It quickly replaced the old office at Rock Creek. In April 1908, at the request of a number of local citizens, Glenwood became an incorporated town. By 1910, its population stood at 768.
In 1914, Glenwood received an additional economic boost when the Memphis, Dallas, and Gulf Railroad (MD&G) opened new tracks between Glenwood and Hot Springs, making the town a major rail junction as well as one of the centers of the lumber industry in the southern Ouachita Mountains.
By 1916, the community included several churches, a number of new businesses, a telephone system, and a new public “dipping vat,” where local farmers brought their livestock for dipping as part of the state’s tick eradication program. By 1920, almost 900 citizens lived in the community.
While Hays and Fagan were busy developing Glenwood proper, the A. L. Clark Lumber Company was building its own residential “town,” near its mill. It consisted of an area of large white frame houses for mill supervisors and office employees along Gilmer Street. Many smaller worker houses, painted red and white, were built along nearby Clay Street, sometimes called Candy Street.
In the fall of 1908, the company built a large frame community building near downtown; it was used for church services and a school. A few months later, the Glenwood Special School District was formed. The next year, a two-story brick building was constructed.
In the 1920s, Glenwood’s population continued to grow. Its importance as a transportation hub and a growing regional trade center was enhanced when what is now U.S. 70 was paved between Glenwood and Hot Springs and large tracts of land around the town were converted to profitable peach orchards.
The 1930s brought the Great Depression and hard times to Glenwood. With it came a disaster that very nearly spelled the death of the town itself. In 1922, the Caddo River Lumber Company purchased the A. L. Clark Company mill at Glenwood and expanded it. Within a few years, the new facility was humming with activity day and night. On a stormy night in June 1936, a lighting strike started a blaze that consumed most of the mill complex. Though the mill remained open for another eighteen months, the company did not consider rebuilding. Within a short while, it relocated its entire operation to Oregon and took many of the community’s leading families with it.
Glenwood survived because of a number of more modest lumber operations that sprang up in the wake of the destruction of the big mill. However, the town’s population declined to 854 in 1940 and 843 in 1950.
World War II through the Faubus Era
In 1940, the Arkansas Slate Manufacturing Company built a large mill north of Glenwood to produce roofing granules. In 1942, a new manganese processing plant was opened west of town. At the same time, a worldwide shortage of cinnabar (mercury) caused by World War II led to extensive mining of that mineral in the area. These mills and their work force gave a much-needed boost to the local economy.
During the late 1940s, nearby Bethel, Bonnerdale, and Rosboro schools consolidated with the Glenwood district, necessitating new public school facilities in 1951 and 1956.
Modern Era
The 1970s witnessed an aggressive campaign of industrial growth and annexation that brought the town’s population up to 1,402 by 1980. During this period, the Curt Bean Lumber Company, one of the nation’s largest independently owned lumber producers, located its lumber mill in Glenwood. During the 1990s, the Caddo River at Glenwood became one of the most popular canoeing streams in western Arkansas. The population stood at 1,354 in 1990. Beginning in 1994, the Glenwood Country Club’s golf course, host to the annual Dick Kelly Golf Classics, named for President Bill Clinton’s stepfather, was opened. In 1995, the Glenwood School district consolidated with that of nearby Amity to form the Centerpoint School District, with a new campus located at old Rosboro.
During the 1990s, the region’s flourishing poultry industry, begun several years earlier, attracted a sizeable influx of Hispanic immigrants who, as of 2010, make up more than twenty-two percent of Glenwood's population.
For additional information
“Glenwood, Arkansas, & Surrounding Area.” Glenwood, AR: Greater Glenwood Chamber of Commerce, 1997.
Hull, Clifton E. Shortline Railroads of Arkansas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969.
Pike County Heritage Club. Early History of Pike County, Arkansas: The First One Hundred Years. Murfreesboro, AR: Pike County Archives and History Society, 1978.
Caddo Gap
Graysoria
ANTOINE
Shawmut
Modern Era
Arkansas Midland
Caddo Valley RR
---------------------------------------------------------
Caddo Valley Railroad (reporting mark CVYR) is a short-line railroad headquartered in Glenwood, Arkansas.
CVYR operates a 52-mile line in Arkansas from Gurdon, Arkansas (where it interchanges with Union Pacific) to Bird Mill, Arkansas.
The line was first owned by Missouri Pacific, a predecessor of Union Pacific, and was sold to Arkansas Midland Railroad (AKMD) in 1992, then in 2000 sold by AKMD to its present owners under a sale ordered by the Surface Transportation Board.
CVYR and AKMD are involved in a controversy regarding a planned sale of CVYR to Pioneer, a shortline operator. AKMD claims that, under the provisions of the sale, before the line can be sold to another party, AKMD must be given the first opportunity to repurchase it. A hearing was pending in May 2006.[1]
In September 2010, Bean Lumber of Glenwood, AR (the main customer & owner of the line) closed its doors. The CVYR has not provided service since that time. A rail has been rolled near the AR-53 crossing, and a red flag rendering the line out of service beyond that point.
Arkansas Midland has been providing service between the UP interchange and Arkansas Route 53 (northwest of town) to service the Georgia-Pacific saw mill on US 67. MM GP10 #7530, presumably owned by the Caddo Valley, remains in unserviceable condition at the old open air shop in Antoine, Arkansas. Supposedly everything has been sold to a scrapper.
Arkansas Midland
Arkansas Midland Railway Company, Inc. AKMD #77
Nature of Firm
AKMD operates 112 miles of track in Arkansas over five disconnected lines. One line runs from Mountain Pine through Hot Springs to a UP connection at Malvern, Arkansas, (33.3 miles). A second line runs from Helena to a connection with UP at Lexa, Arkansas, (12 miles). The third segment comprises two lines that connect with the UP at North Little Rock, Arkansas. One line runs 6.6 miles to Galloway and the other is 7.4 miles, consisting of the Carlisle Industrial Lead. The fourth line is from Warren to Dermott, Arkansas, (39.4 miles), with 5.6 miles of trackage rights to interchange at McGehee, Arkansas. The fifth line connects the UP McGehee Yard to Cypress Bend (10 miles) and includes the Potlach Spur (3.4 miles). Traffic consists of forest and grain products, aggregates, building materials, cottonseeds and chemicals.
History
The Mountain Pine line was built by the Hot Springs Railroad and opened January 25, 1876, as a 3-foot gauge line, Hot Springs Railroad was sold to the Choctow, Oklahoma & Gulf (Rock Island) in 1902. The Helena branch was built by the Iron Mountain & Helena Railroad chartered in 1879 and purchased by the St. Louis & Iron Mountain in 1882. The Galloway to North Little Rock line was a former Rock Island Line. These three lines were purchased from the MP by the current operator on February 23, 1992. The Carlisle Industrial Lead which is a former Rock Island line was leased to the current operators by the UP on August 11, 2000. The Warren branch was leased to the current operators on December 13, 2004. In 2011, AKMD reacquired a three-mile section from Gurdon, Arkansas, to MP 429.45 miles north of Gurdon.
Company Information
Mailing Address
Arkansas Midland Railway Company, Inc.
314 Reynolds Road, Bldg 41
Malvern, AR 72104
Arkansas Midland Railroad (1992)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arkansas Midland Railroad Arkansas Midland Railroad logo.png
Arkansas Midland Railroad system map.svg
Reporting mark AKMD
Locale Arkansas
Dates of operation 1992–
Track gauge 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Headquarters Malvern, Arkansas
The Arkansas Midland Railroad (reporting mark AKMD) is a Class III short-line railroad headquartered in Malvern, Arkansas.
AKMD operates 138 miles (222 km) of line in Arkansas consisting of seven disconnected branch lines and two sister railroads, the Prescott & Northwestern (PNW) and the Warren & Saline River (WSR). The AKMD branches were formerly part of the Union Pacific Railroad, or a predecessor, while the PNW and WSR lines were acquired from Potlatch Corporation. All branch lines connect (interchange traffic) with Union Pacific Railroad. AKMD also interchanges with BNSF in North Little Rock.
Hot Springs Branch: 33.3 mi (53.6 km) from Malvern, through Hot Springs, to Mountain Pine
North Little Rock Branch: 14.6 miles (23.5 km) from North Little Rock to Galloway (7.8 mi. former Cotton Belt, 6.8 mi (10.9 km). former Rock Island)
Warren Branch: 39.4 mi (63.4 km) from Warren to Dermott, with trackage rights over an additional 5.6 miles (9.0 km) to McGehee
Cypress Bend Branch: 11.2 mi (18.0 km) from McGehee to Cypress Bend
Helena Branch: 24.9 mi (40.1 km) from Lexa to Helena
Jacksonville Branch: 2.7 mi (4.3 km)
Prescott and Northwestern Railroad (PNW, affiliated): 5.7 mi (9.2 km)
Warren and Saline River Railroad (WSR, affiliated): 2.7 mi (4.3 km)
Gurdon Branch (emergency operation of a segment of the Caddo Valley Railroad): 3.1 mi (5.0 km)
AKMD traffic generally consists of forest and agricultural products, aggregates, aluminum, building materials and chemicals.
AKMD is a subsidiary of Pinsly Railroad Company, a holding company owning seven short-line railroads in the United States. The Hot Springs, Helena and Galloway branches are owned by AKMD (purchased in 1992); the Warren, Cypress Bend and Jacksonville branches are leased; the PNW and WSR are owned by Pinsly and operated by AKMD.
On December 5, 2014, Genesee & Wyoming filed a Notice of Exemption with the Surface Transportation Board to acquire AKMD (along with affiliates PNW and WSR) from Pinsly.[1]
Dardanelle and Russellville Railroad
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dardanelle and Russellville Railroad ChrisLitherlandDR.jpg
ALCO S-3 #19 undergoing maintenance in 2011
Reporting mark DR
Locale Arkansas
Dates of operation 1883–
Track gauge 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)
Headquarters Russellville, Arkansas
The Dardanelle and Russellville Railroad Company (reporting mark DR) is a Class III short-line railroad headquartered in Russellville, Arkansas.
DR operates a 4.8 mile line in Arkansas from Russellville (where it interchanges with Union Pacific) to a point beside the Arkansas River, across from Dardanelle, Arkansas. Current DR traffic generally consists of pulp board, plastics, and forest products. DR is currently owned by Arkansas Shortline Railroads, Inc., a short-line railroad holding company.
History
The line was initially chartered as the Dardanelle & Russellville Railway, and train operations began in August 1883.[1] After undergoing reorganization in 1900, operations continued as the Dardanelle & Russellville Railroad. When originally constructed, the railroad carried cotton and other agricultural products. The predominant traffic shifted to coal by 1900, thanks to extensive semi-anthracite coal production along the railroad. Coal production along the D&R ended in the mid-1950s when the last underground mines of McAlester Fuel Company were closed.
At one time, the railroad owned the Dardanelle Pontoon Bridge and Turnpike Company, which operated a pontoon bridge (for wagons and later automobiles, not trains) across the Arkansas River at Dardanelle. The D&R was also a leader in the trend for railroads to branch into other transportation modes, owning a highway subsidiary from 1919-1960. The highway subsidiary, Dardanelle Transfer Company, operated both bus and truck service over an expanded territory much larger than was served by the railroad itself.
References
*Hull, Clifton E. and Pollard, William A. (1995), The Dardanelle & Russellville Railroad, University of Central Arkansas Press, Conway, Arkansas. ISBN 9780944436189
Below are a few lawsuits, not as many as I thought as I'd repeated. You can actually get through them if you are so inclined. I was not.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Caddo Valley Railroad Company-Abandonment Exemption-in Pike and Clark Counties, AR
A Notice by the Transportation Department and the Surface Transportation Board on
11/16/2011
Publication Date:
11/16/2011
Agencies:
Department of Transportation
Surface Transportation Board
Document Type:
Notice
Document Citation:
76 FR 71124
Page:
71124-71125 (2 pages)
Agency/Docket Number:
Docket No. AB 1076 (Sub-No. 1X)
Document Number:
2011-29592
Document Details
Published Document
On October 27, 2011, Caddo Valley Railroad Company (CVRR) filed with the Surface
Transportation Board (Board) a petition under 49 U.S.C. 10502 for exemption from the
provisions of 49 U.S.C. 10903 to abandon a segment of the Norman Branch Line extending
between milepost 429.45, near Gurdon, and milepost 447, near Antoine, a distance of
17.55 miles, in Pike and Clark Counties, Ark. (the line).[1] The line traverses United
States Postal Service Zip Codes 71943 and 71922, and includes the stations of Summit
(milepost 433.1), Okolona (milepost 441.0), and Pike City Junction (milepost 446.5).
CVRR states that, based on information in CVRR's possession, the line does not contain
Federally granted rights-of-way. Any documentation in CVRR's possession will be made
available promptly to those requesting it.
The interest of railroad employees will be protected by the conditions set forth in
Oregon Short Line Railroad—Abandonment Portion Goshen Branch Between Firth & Ammon, in
Bingham & Bonneville Counties, Idaho, 360 I.C.C. 91 (1979).
By issuance of this notice, the Board is instituting an exemption proceeding pursuant
to 49 U.S.C. 10502(b). A final decision will be issued by February 14, 2012.
Any offer of financial assistance (OFA) under 49 CFR 1152.27(b)(2) will be due no later
than 10 days after service of a decision granting the petition for exemption. Each OFA
must be accompanied by a $1,500 filing fee. See 49 CFR 1002.2(f)(25).
All interested persons should be aware that, following abandonment of Start Printed
Page 71125rail service and salvage of the line, the line may be suitable for other
public use, including interim trail use. Any request for a public use condition under
49 CFR 1152.28 or for trail use/rail banking under 49 CFR 1152.29 will be due no later
than December 6, 2011. Each trail request must be accompanied by a $250 filing fee. See
49 CFR 1002.2(f)(27).
All filings in response to this notice must refer to Docket No. AB 1076 (Sub-No. 1X),
and must be sent to: (1) Surface Transportation Board, 395 E Street SW., Washington, DC
20423-0001; and (2) Richard H. Streeter, 5255 Partridge Lane NW., Washington, DC 20016.
Replies to the petition are due on or before December 6, 2011.
Persons seeking further information concerning abandonment procedures may contact the
Board's Office of Public Assistance, Governmental Affairs and Compliance at (202) 245-
0238 or refer to the full abandonment regulations at 49 CFR pt. 1152. Questions
concerning environmental issues may be directed to the Board's Office of Environmental
Analysis (OEA) at (202) 245-0305. Assistance for the hearing impaired is available
through the Federal Information Relay Service (FIRS) at 1-(800)-877-8339.
An environmental assessment (EA) (or environmental impact statement (EIS), if
necessary) prepared by OEA will be served upon all parties of record and upon any
agencies or other persons who commented during its preparation. Other interested
persons may contact OEA to obtain a copy of the EA (or EIS). EAs in these abandonment
proceedings normally will be made available within 60 days of the filing of the
petition. The deadline for submission of comments on the EA generally will be within 30
days of its service.
Board decisions and notices are available on our Web site at http://www.stb.dot.gov.
Decided: November 10, 2011.
By the Board, Rachel D. Campbell, Director, Office of Proceedings.
Jeffrey Herzig,
Clearance Clerk.
Footnotes
1. On November 9, 2011, CVRR filed a letter with the Board attaching a letter dated
October 7, 2011, from counsel for Arkansas Midland Railroad Company, Inc. (AKMD). AKMD
notes that CVRR acquired the Norman Branch, which includes the line at issue here, from
AKMD under the Board's feeder line statute at 49 U.S.C. 10907. See Caddo Antoine &
Little Mo. R.R.—Feeder Line Acquis.—Ark. Midland R.R. Co. Line Between Gurdon & Birds
Mill, Ark., 4 S.T.B. 326 (1999). AKMD further states that on September 29, 2011, AKMD
reacquired from CVRR the segment of the Norman Branch between milepost 426.88 in Gurdon
and milepost 429.45 north of Gurdon and, as part of the same transaction, waived its
statutory right of first refusal with respect to the rest of the Norman Branch. See 49
U.S.C. 10907(h).
Back to Citation
[FR Doc. 2011-29592 Filed 11-15-11; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4915-01-P
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US 8th Cir.
CADDO ANTOINE AND LITTLE MISSOURI RAILROAD COMPANY GS v. Arkansas Midland Railroad Company, Incorporated, Intervenor.
CADDO ANTOINE AND LITTLE MISSOURI RAILROAD COMPANY GS v. Arkansas Midland Railroad Company, Incorporated, Intervenor.
United States Court of Appeals,Eighth Circuit.
CADDO ANTOINE AND LITTLE MISSOURI RAILROAD COMPANY; GS Roofing Products Company, Inc.; Beazer West, doing business as Gifford-Hill & Company, Inc.; Bean Lumber Company; Curt Bean Lumber Company; Barksdale Lumber Company, Inc., Petitioners, v. UNITED STATES of America; Surface Transportation Board, Respondents, Arkansas Midland Railroad Company, Incorporated, Intervenor.
Glenwood and Southern Railroad Company, Amicus Curiae. CADDO ANTOINE AND LITTLE MISSOURI RAILROAD COMPANY; Dardanelle & Russellville Railroad Company; GS Roofing Products Company, Inc., Beazer West doing business as Gifford-Hill & Company, Inc.; Bean Lumber Company; Curt Bean Lumber Company; Barksdale Lumber Company, Inc., Petitioners, v. UNITED STATES of America; Surface Transportation Board, Respondents. Glenwood and Southern Railroad Company, Amicus Curiae.
Nos. 95-2006, 95-2582.
Decided: September 13, 1996
Before FAGG, WOLLMAN, and BEAM, Circuit Judges.Richard Streeter, Washington D.C., argued (Mark J. Andrews and Robert S. Hargraves, on the brief), for petitioners. Laurence R. Latourette and Craig M. Keats, Washington, D.C., argued (Lisa M. Helpert, Robert B. Nicholson, John P. Fonte and Evelyn G. Kitay, on the brief), for respondent.
This case involves consolidated petitions for review of decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission (Commission).1
No. 95-2006 is a petition for review of the Commission's April 18, 1995, decision granting in part the application of the Caddo Antoine and Little Missouri Railroad Company to purchase under the feeder line development provisions of 49 U.S.C. § 10910 a 52.9-mile line of railroad located in southwestern Arkansas, known as the Norman Branch. Caddo Antoine and Little Missouri Railroad Company-Federal Line Acquisition-Arkansas Midland Railroad Company Line Between Gurdon and Birds Mill, AR, Finance Docket No. 32479 (April 18, 1995).
No. 95-2582 is a petition for review of the Commission's June 15, 1995, decision declining to extend a service order authorizing the Dardanelle and Russellville Railroad Company to operate over the Norman Branch.
I.
The petitioners are the Caddo Antoine and Little Missouri Railroad Company (CALM), five of the six shippers located on the Norman Branch, and Dardanelle and Russellville Railroad Company (D & R), which is an Arkansas-based short line railroad. Caddo Antoine and Little Missouri Railroad Company (CALM) is a non-carrier subsidiary of D & R. Both D & R and CALM are controlled by the five petitioners/shippers identified below. Arkansas Midland Railroad Company (Arkansas Midland), the intervenor in this action, is a subsidiary of the Massachusetts-based Pinsly Railroad Company, Inc.2 Arkansas Midland acquired ownership of the Norman Branch from the Union Pacific in February of 1992. In addition to the Norman Branch, Arkansas Midland consists of three additional branches: the Carlisle Branch, the Hot Springs Branch, and the Helena Branch, all of which are located within the state of Arkansas.
Since its completion in the early part of this century, the Norman Branch has been operated as a single line of railroad extending from its point of interchange with what was formerly the Missouri Pacific Railroad (now a part of the Union Pacific Railroad) at milepost 426.3 near Gurdon, Arkansas, to milepost 479.2 near Birds Mill, Arkansas.
On December 3, 1993, storm damage occurred at mileposts 475.9 and 477.2, near the northernmost tip of the Norman Branch. On December 16, 1993, Arkansas Midland announced an embargo of rail shipments to four of the six shippers on the Norman Branch: GS Roofing Products Company, Inc., Bean Lumber Company, Curt Bean Lumber Company, and Barksdale Lumber Company. On February 22, 1994, Arkansas Midland extended its embargo to terminate service to petitioner Beazer West, Inc. d/b/a Gifford-Hill & Company, which is located at milepost 446.6 on the Norman Branch. Arkansas Midland continued to provide service to the sixth shipper on the line, International Paper Company (International Paper), which is located at milepost 428.9 at the southernmost tip of the line, some 2.07 miles from the point of interchange with the Union Pacific line at Gurdon.
In response to the notice of embargo, the embargoed shippers entered into negotiations with Arkansas Midland and the Union Pacific in an attempt to have Arkansas Midland restore rail service on the remainder of the Norman Branch. The Union Pacific offered financial assistance in excess of $1.1 million in the form of increased car fees and track materials. The petitioner shippers offered financial assistance and intervened with Arkansas state officials to obtain funds for Arkansas Midland to use to make repairs to the line.
In addition to refusing to make the repairs or to restore service, Arkansas Midland filed a system diagram map (SDM) with the Commission on February 18, 1994, on which it designated the entire Norman Branch as being a candidate for abandonment. Thereafter, Arkansas Midland amended its SDM to modify the designation of the southernmost 3.7-mile portion of the line, on which International Paper is located. That portion of the line was changed from a category 1 status, which designates a line as being a candidate for immediate abandonment, to a category 5 status, meaning that operations would continue over that portion of the line. See 49 C.F.R. §§ 1152.10(b)(1) and (5).
In response to the prospect of losing railroad service, the five embargoed shippers took three related actions. First, they requested that CALM file a feeder line application in order to acquire the entire Norman Branch. Second, they asked CALM to file an emergency petition with the Commission seeking a directed service order that would allow CALM to begin immediate operations over the entire line. Finally, they filed a damage action against Arkansas Midland.
The feeder line application and the request for a directed service order were filed with the Commission on March 18, 1994.3 Because CALM was not aware of the amendment to Arkansas Midland's SDM when it filed its feeder line application, the application initially referred to 49 U.S.C. § 10910(b)(1)(A)(ii), which relates to lines designated for abandonment, as providing the basis for the acquisition of the entire Norman Branch. The application further indicated, however, that “CALM will seek a finding by the Commission that public convenience and necessity permit or require acquisition.”
Arkansas Midland filed a response opposing the request for a directed service order, referring to that portion of the Norman Branch line north of milepost 430.0 as the “northern segment.”
On March 28, 1994, the Commission issued an emergency service order pursuant to 49 U.S.C. § 11123(a)(1) authorizing the D & R and CALM to “enter upon and operate [Arkansas Midland's] Norman Branch.” The service order authorized D & R/CALM to operate over the full extent of the Norman Branch, but permitted it to provide service only to the five shippers located on the 49.2 miles of track located north of milepost 430.0. Arkansas Midland was authorized to continue serving International Paper, the sole shipper located on the 3.17-mile portion of the line between milepost 430.0 and the point of interchange with the Union Pacific Railroad. Thereafter, the service order, which was originally issued for a period of thirty days, was extended and was scheduled to expire at 11:59 p.m. on June 15, 1995.
On April 12, 1994, the Commission published its notice of acceptance of CALM's feeder line application in the Federal Register, 59 Fed.Reg. at 17400, establishing a deadline of May 12, 1994, for the receipt of competing applications.
In compliance with the notice, CALM filed comments and evidence in support of its showing that the public convenience and necessity required or permitted the sale of the entire Norman Branch. CALM alleged that if International Paper was not included among the shippers it could serve on the Norman Branch, it projected a net operating loss of $124,701, whereas it expected to achieve net annual operating income of $264,649 if it was permitted to acquire the entire Norman Branch and to serve all six shippers located thereon.4
The five embargoed shippers submitted statements in support of CALM's acquisition of the entire Norman Branch. They alleged that they had already suffered damages in excess of $650,000 because of failure to obtain rail service from Arkansas Midland and that they would be forced to shut down or severely curtail their operations if reliable rail service was not restored and maintained. International Paper filed a one-page statement saying that it would like to have Arkansas Midland continue to serve its plant rather than to have Arkansas Midland be forced to sell to CALM that portion of the Norman Branch that serves International Paper.
In its response to CALM's feeder line application, Arkansas Midland recited the worsening track conditions, declining car loads and revenues, and increasing losses it had experienced on the Norman Branch. It alleged that International Paper is the second largest shipper on Arkansas Midland's entire system, the loss of which would put Arkansas Midland at serious financial and operational risk. Included within Arkansas Midland's reply to CALM's application was a statement of Michael P. Root, the majority stockholder, president and director of the Glenwood & Southern Railroad Company (GSR), which set forth that GSR had entered into a lease and option to purchase agreement with Arkansas Midland to purchase and operate the Norman Branch from milepost 430.0 to milepost 479.2.
GSR filed a notice seeking an exemption from the otherwise applicable regulatory requirements to permit it to acquire and operate the Norman Branch. GSR and Arkansas Midland also filed a joint petition to terminate the earlier-issued service order permitting the D & R to operate the line. Thereafter, the Commission issued decisions ordering GSR not to consummate its proposed transaction with the Arkansas Midland, denying Arkansas Midland and GSR's motion to dismiss CALM's feeder line application, and rejecting GSR's notice of exemption.
In November 1994, GSR filed a competing feeder line application. On March 9, 1995, the Commission issued a decision, which has not been challenged on judicial review, affirming the decision of its Director, Office of Proceedings, that GSR had not sufficiently shown that it was a financially responsible person, as required by 49 U.S.C. § 10910(a).
The Commission concluded in its April 18, 1995, decision on CALM's feeder line application that the feeder line statute did not authorize it to direct the forced sale of the entire Norman Branch. It found that because the northern segment had been listed on Arkansas Midland's SDM as a category 1 candidate for abandonment and because service on that segment was inadequate, CALM was entitled to purchase that portion of the line under the provisions of section 10910(b)(1)(A)(ii). The Commission found that CALM had made a showing of financial responsibility sufficient to satisfy the Commission that it would be likely to be able to cover expenses for three years.
The Commission then considered the 3.7-mile southern segment of the line under the public convenience and necessity (PC & N) standard of section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i). Because CALM had submitted no PC & N evidence regarding the southern segment standing alone, the Commission granted the feeder line application only as to the northern segment. Because it believed that operations serving only the five shippers located north of milepost 430.0 would be incapable of sustaining an operating profit, CALM declined to acquire this truncated portion of the Norman Branch.
Following the entry of the Commission's decision, petitioners sought an extension of the service order under which D & R/CALM had been providing service during the pendency of CALM's feeder line application. In response, the Commission agreed to only a thirty-day extension. On May 17, 1995, GSR filed an ex parte notice of exemption to lease and operate the portion of the Norman Branch north of milepost 430.0. On May 31, 1995, petitioners filed a motion to have GSR's notice of exemption declared void. On the same day, CALM requested an extension of the service order pending completion of judicial review. On June 15, the Commission issued its decision granting only a fifteen-day extension and ordering CALM to clear the Norman Branch of its equipment and supplies and cease rail operations on the Norman Branch by 11:59 p.m., June 30, 1995. On June 29, 1995, we granted petitioners' motions for stay of the Commission's April 18 and June 15, 1995, decisions pending judicial review.
II.
The petitioners contend that the Commission erroneously and artificially bifurcated the Norman Branch into a “northern” and “southern” segment in an attempt to circumvent the otherwise logical conclusion that the entire Norman Branch is a “particular railroad line” as that term is used in section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i). They contend that the Commission's “two line” assumption is not only arbitrary but is at odds with the text of the statute, pointing out that although other portions of the statute contemplate transactions involving a “part” or a “portion” of a line, section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i) speaks only in terms of a “particular railroad line” and not in terms of a part or portion of a line. For example, sections 10903(a)(1) and (2) provide that a rail carrier may abandon “any part” or discontinue the operation over “any part” of its railroad lines. Sections 10905(b)(1), (d)(1), and (f)(4) relate to offers of financial assistance to maintain service on all or a “portion” or “part” of an abandoned railroad line. Section 10910(h) provides that a purchasing carrier may propose to sell or abandon “all or any portion of a purchased railroad line.”
Arkansas Midland, on the other hand, argues that the feeder line development program was never intended to give an adversary carrier a mechanism by which to force a rail carrier to sell a profitable segment of line which is adjacent to a line being abandoned.
III.
Concerned about the deteriorating rail service provided on some of the secondary railroad lines throughout the country, Congress enacted the Staggers Rail Act of 1980 (the Act). The Act is codified at 49 U.S.C. § 10910 and provides two methods whereby a line of railroad can be acquired other than through a mutually agreed upon sale and purchase. The relevant portions of the Act read as follows:
§ 10910. Railroad development
(a) In this section-
(1) “financially responsible person” means a person who
(A) is capable of paying the constitutional minimum value of the railroad line proposed to be acquired, and (B) is able to assure that adequate transportation will be provided over such line for a period of not less than 3 years. Such term includes a governmental authority but does not include a class I or a class II rail carrier.
․
(b)(1) When the Interstate Commerce Commission finds that-
(A)(i) the public convenience and necessity require or permit the sale of a particular railroad line under this section; or
(ii) a railroad line is on a system diagram map as required under section 10904 of this title, but the rail carrier owning such line has not filed an application to abandon such line under sections 10903 and 10904 of this title before an application to purchase such line, or any required preliminary filing with respect to such application, is filed under this section; and
(B) an application to purchase such line has been filed, in accordance with regulations required under subsection (k) of this section, by a financially responsible person, the Commission shall require the rail carrier owning the railroad line to sell such line to such financially responsible person at a price not less than the constitutional minimum value.
․
(c)(1) For purposes of this section, the Commission may determine that the public convenience and necessity require or permit the sale of a railroad line if the Commission determines, after a hearing on the record, that-
(A) the rail carrier operating such line refuses within a reasonable time to make the necessary efforts to provide adequate service to shippers who transport traffic over such line;
(B) the transportation over such line is inadequate for the majority of shippers who transport traffic over such line;
(C) the sale of such line will not have a significantly adverse financial effect on the rail carrier operating such line;
(D) the sale of such line will not have an adverse effect on the overall operational performance of the rail carrier operating such line; and
(E) the sale of such line will be likely to result in improved railroad transportation for shippers that transport traffic over such line.
․
Emphasis Added.5
Whether the difference between the descriptive terms “a particular railroad line,” as set forth in section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i), and “any part,” “portion,” or “part,” as used in the other statutes cited above, would be controlling in the absence of further circumstances, we need not say. Rather, as we conclude below, when viewed in the light of the history of the operation of the Norman Branch, the circumstances under which Arkansas Midland and the Commission bifurcated the line, and the legislative history of the feeder line development program, the term “a particular railroad line” in the circumstances of this case includes the Norman Branch in its entirety.
IV.
The legislative history of section 10910 explains Congress's purpose in enacting the feeder line development program provisions of the Act:
To provide shipper groups and government agencies an alternative to inadequate rail service and to preserve feeder lines prior to the total downgrading of such lines, the House amendment provides for a feeder line development program which would require a rail carrier to sell a railroad line to a financially responsible person at a price not less than the constitutional minimum, if the Commission makes a finding that the present or future public convenience and necessity required or permitted the abandonment or discontinuance of a railroad line, or if the Commission makes a finding that the transportation provided over a particular line is inadequate. Inadequate transportation is defined by five criteria. The Commission must affirmatively determine the existence of the conditions set forth in all five criteria as a prerequisite to the sale of a railroad line under this section. The burden of proving inadequacy of service is on the person filing to acquire the rail line.
․
The Conferees believe that the feeder line program will give shippers and communities an opportunity to insist upon adequate rail service. Where such service is not forthcoming the provision provides, through acquisition, a viable alternative to poor service or total abandonment.
H.Conf.Rep. No. 1430, 96th Cong., 2nd Sess. 124, reprinted in 1980 U.S.C.C.A.N. 4110, at 4156-57. (For a review of the circumstances leading to the enactment of the Act and the purposes it was designed to achieve, see Simmons v. I.C.C., 871 F.2d 702, 706-07 (7th Cir.1989).) As the Commission has recognized, “The overriding intent of the feeder line provisions is to preserve service over lines that may be abandoned or downgraded.” Sandusky County-Seneca County-City of Tiffin Port Authority-Feeder Line Application, 1990 WL 288059, *3 (I.C.C.).
V.
We undertake our review of the Commission's decision cognizant that “we must defer to the [Commission's] interpretation of the statutes or regulations it administers ‘unless there are compelling indications that the Commission's interpretation is incorrect.’ ” Simmons v. I.C.C., 871 F.2d at 705 (quoting Black v. I.C.C., 762 F.2d 106, 114-15 (D.C.Cir.1985)). We are to ask only whether, in those cases in which Congress has not directly addressed the precise question at hand, the Commission's action “is based on a permissible construction of the statute.” Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2782, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). With all due respect to the Commission, we conclude that its interpretation of section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i) in the circumstances of the present case is not a permissible construction of the statute, for, as we view the case, the Commission's interpretation frustrates rather than effectuates the purposes which the feeder line development program was designed to achieve.
As indicated above, section 10910 establishes alternate bases for permitting approval of feeder line applications where the owning carrier is either not providing adequate service or has identified the line in category 1 or 2 on its SDM as a candidate for abandonment but has not yet applied for abandonment. Although an SDM designation may eliminate the necessity for the applicant to prove inadequate service, we conclude that the statute does not preclude the Commission from considering an application under the PN & C standard simply because a line owner providing inadequate service to a majority of the shippers on the line decides to place a portion of the line on its SDM.
In its July 24, 1991, revision of its feeder railroad development rules, the Commission discontinued its automatic rejection policy for feeder line applications filed after the filing of an overlapping abandonment application, explaining that
[u]nder § 10910, a line is available for forced sale if either: (1) the owning carrier has identified the line in category 1 or 2 of its SDM as a candidate for abandonment but has not yet applied for abandonment authority (“SDM standard”); or (2) the operating carrier is not providing adequate service (“PC & N standard”). Under either standard the applicant must show that it is a financially responsible person and the Commission must establish the constitutional minimum value of the line.
Only the SDM standard explicitly excludes lines already subject to pending abandonment applications. Nothing in the statute precludes the PC & N standard from applying to lines already the subject of abandonment applications. There is no language to limit its use, as is the case with the separate SDM standard. Clearly, if Congress had intended that we reject all post abandonment feeder line applications, it easily could have included limiting language in the PC & N subsection. By its failure to do so, we may infer that Congress envisioned circumstances where it would be appropriate for us to consider and grant post-abandonment feeder line applications.
․
A rigid automatic rejection policy does not harmonize well with the rail transportation policies of preserving rail service and reducing regulatory barriers to entry, particularly when the abandonment application does not encompass all of the line sought in the feeder line application. Additionally, the automatic rejection policy leads to an undesirable filing race. This results from the line owner's ability to abort unilaterally a feeder line application by submitting an abandonment application first, even if it is filed just a few minutes before the feeder line application and covers only a small portion of a longer line covered by the feeder line application․
7 I.C.C. 902, 911, 913 (1991) (footnotes omitted).
We agree with petitioners that the Commission's position with respect to considering after-filed feeder line applications in abandonment cases is inconsistent with the position it has taken in the present case. The rejection of CALM's application to acquire the entire Norman Branch does not harmonize well with the policies of preserving rail service and reducing regulatory barriers to entry.
As we read the Commissioner's revised policy, it is designed to prevent what appears to have occurred in the present case, i.e., the owning carrier (Arkansas Midland) downgrades (by failing to maintain and repair its tracks) services over a portion of its line that it deems more expensive to operate, while maintaining service to a single shipper that it deems easier and more profitable to serve, and then files a SDM covering only the undesirable portion of the line shortly before the abandoned shippers are able to file a feeder line application. If the Commission's position is affirmed in this case, Arkansas Midland will have succeeded in lopping off service to the majority of its former shippers while “cherry-picking” the single, more easily served shipper on the remaining seven percent of the line it elected to retain. There may be situations in which such a result may ultimately obtain, as, for example, where no carrier files an application to acquire the portion of the line sought to be abandoned. But that is not the situation here, where CALM desires to acquire a line that from the date of its construction has been operated as a unitary line of railroad.
The Norman Branch presents the type of situation that the feeder line development program was designed to address. Arkansas Midland, for whatever reasons of its own, apparently overstated the damages resulting from the December 3, 1993, storm (CALM alleges that the storm damage was minimal and was repaired in less than four hours once it and D & R were authorized to commence operations over the line). Rather than try to repair this relatively minor damage, Arkansas Midland used the damage as a justification for embargoing further shipments on the greater portion of the line, leaving the petitioner shippers to fend for themselves. Accordingly, in light of CALM's application to provide service over the entire length of the Norman Branch, a line that had historically been operated as a unitary operation, the Commission should have treated the entirety of the Norman Branch as “a particular railroad line” and thus have reviewed CALM's application under the PN & C standard of section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i) rather than under (A)(ii).
The Commission contends that its decisions to segment lines designated for abandonment have been consistently endorsed by the courts. For example, in Futurex Industries, Inc. v. I.C.C., 897 F.2d 866, 870-73 (7th Cir.1990), the court held that the Commission's decision to approve the abandonment of a 14.58-mile segment of track was not arbitrary or capricious. In reaching this conclusion, the court noted that:
When segmentation of transportation lines is involved, we consider whether the segmentation satisfies three conditions: (1) does the proposed segment have logical termini?; (2) does the segment have substantially independent utility?; and (3) will abandonment of the disputed segment foreclose alternate treatment of the remaining segments? The satisfaction of these three criteria tends to ensure that carriers will not abuse the out-of-service exemption by carving out one segment of a line in an attempt to make the remainder of the line useless and subject imminently to abandonment. We must, of course, be vigilant to detect and restrain the latter phenomenon should it appear.
Id. at 872 (footnote and citations omitted). In Indiana Sugars, Inc. v. I.C.C., 694 F.2d 1098 (7th Cir.1982), the court held that the Commission acted arbitrarily and capriciously in not bifurcating from a proposed 42.89 mile abandonment of a seven-mile segment of track on which a showing of serious shipper need had been established.
We agree with the petitioners that neither of those holdings controls our decision in the present case. To say that the Commission was warranted in segmenting a portion of line in one case and was not warranted in not segmenting a portion of line in another is hardly the same that it must segment in all cases. The Commission itself has acknowledged that its analytical focus should “be on the ultimate issue: whether abandonment of one segment would foreclose the viability of contiguous segments, making their eventual abandonment a foregone conclusion.” Central Michigan Railway Co.-Abandonment-East of Ionia to West of Owosso-In Michigan, 8 I.C.C.2d 166, 173 (1991).
Although the Commission cites Cheney Railroad Co. v. I.C.C., 902 F.2d 66 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 985, 111 S.Ct. 519, 112 L.Ed.2d 530 (1990), in support of its decision to segment the Norman Branch, we conclude that that case has little relevance to the facts of the present case. Cheney involved a line of railroad that had been designated for abandonment in its entirety. Cheney filed an application to purchase the entire route. Tyson Foods filed an application to purchase only the 1.61-mile segment on which its plant was located. The question for decision was whether the Commission was required to consider the applications only in the order received and to accept the first qualifying application filed, or whether it could divide the line between applicants. The Commission's decision to do the latter was upheld. Cheney involved an abandonment, however, and thus was governed by the provisions of section 10910(b)(1)(A)(ii), rather than (A)(i). In light of our holding that the Commission should have considered CALM's application to purchase the entire Norman Branch under the PN & C provisions of (A)(i), we find Cheney to be inapposite. We do note, however, the Cheney court's approval of the Commission's reasoning that to consider applications one at a time might delay transfer of a line, which “ ‘would be contrary to the purposes of the feeder line development program, one of which is to preserve feeder lines.’ ” Cheney, 902 F.2d at 69 (quoting 5 I.C.C.2d 250, 254 (1989)). The Cheney court went on to characterize the Commission's decision as “both reasonable in itself and faithful to a Staggers Act objective ‘to preserve [rail] service to protect existing shippers.’ ” Id. (quoting Simmons v. I.C.C., 697 F.2d 326, 329 (D.C.Cir.1982)). If, as the Cheney court noted, and as we have found, the purpose of the feeder line development program is to preserve feeder lines and to preserve service to existing shippers, then to segment the Norman Branch so as to deny CALM the right to bid for the entire line under the provisions of (A)(i) would be to frustrate those purposes in light of the evidence that the revenue from the northern segment will never be adequate to preserve the line and to protect the five shipper petitioners. In a word, what the Commission has done in this case is that which it said in Central Michigan Railway Co. it should guard against: a segmentation of lines that would have the effect of foreclosing the viability of contiguous segments, making their eventual abandonment a foregone conclusion.
In reaching this conclusion, we have considered Arkansas Midland's contention that it will suffer grievous financial loss that will jeopardize the remainder of its rail line operations if it is required to sell the 3.7-mile portion of the line serving International Paper. That argument, however, will be a factor to be taken into account when the Board considers CALM's application in the light of the five criteria set forth in section 10910(c)(1). Likewise, it will be for the Board to determine, as it did with respect to CALM's ability to operate the northern 49.2-mile segment of the Norman Branch, whether CALM has the financial resources to operate the entire Norman Branch.
Our interpretation of section 10910 may strike some as reflecting a utilitarian view of the law-the greatest good for the greatest number of shippers. Nevertheless, we conclude that the words “a particular railroad line,” when viewed in the light of the history of the Norman Branch, the purposes of the feeder line development program, and the circumstances of this case, must be read to describe the entirety of the Norman Branch. Thus, on remand the Board must consider under the provisions of section 10910(b)(1)(A)(i) CALM's application to purchase the entire line. What decision the Board may reach, we do not know. In any event, we are satisfied that our holding, narrow as it is, will not result in the widespread depredation of the weak by the strong in the short line railroad industry.
VI.
In No. 95-2006, we reverse the Commission's decision and remand the case to the Board for further proceedings consistent with the views set forth in this opinion.
In No. 95-2582, we direct the Board to extend the service order authorizing CALM/D & R to continue providing service over the Norman Branch pending disposition of CALM's application to purchase the entire Norman Branch.
FOOTNOTES
1. Section 101 of the ICC Termination Act of 1995, Pub.L. No. 104-88 (effective January 1, 1996), abolished the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Section 201 of that Act established the Surface Transportation Board. Section 204(c)(2) provides that the Board shall continue any suit brought by or against the ICC to the extent the suit involves ICC functions that have been transferred to the Board.For ease of reference, we will use the term “Commission” throughout the opinion when we refer to past events, and we will use the term “Board” when we discuss actions to be taken on remand.
2. The Pinsly Railroad Company, Inc. also controls the following short line railroads: Florida Central Railroad, Florida Midland Railroad Company, Florida Northern Railroad, Greenville & Northern Railway Company, and Pioneer Valley Railroad.
3. After notification by the Commission that CALM was not eligible to apply for a directed service order because it was not yet an operating railroad, D & R was substituted as the operating carrier for purposes of the emergency order.
4. Indeed, CALM's predictions may have already been proved to be correct, for on August 27, 1996, we entered an order granting the emergency motion filed by the petitioner shippers authorizing them to engage an alternative carrier on the Norman Branch, D & R having advised the shippers that because it had lost more than $100,000 during the first seven months of 1996 operating the Norman Branch, it intended to cease operations on August 30, 1996.
5. Sections 10903 and 10904 of Title 49 read as follows:§ 10903. Authorizing abandonment and discontinuance of railroad lines and rail transportation(a) A rail carrier providing transportation subject to the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission under subchapter I of chapter 105 of this title may-(1) abandon any part of its railroad lines; or(2) discontinue the operation of all rail transportation over any part of its railroad lines;only if the Commission finds that the present or future public convenience and necessity require or permit the abandonment or discontinuance. In making the finding, the Commission shall consider whether the abandonment or discontinuance will have a serious, adverse impact on rural and community development.․§ 10904. Filing and procedure for applications to abandon or discontinue(a)(1) An application for a certificate of abandonment or discontinuance under section 10903 of this title, and a notice of intent to abandon or discontinue, must be filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission.․(e)(2) Each rail carrier shall maintain a complete diagram of the transportation system operated, directly or indirectly, by the carrier. The carrier shall submit to the Commission and publish amendments to its diagram that are necessary to maintain the accuracy of the diagram. The diagram shall-(A) include a detailed description of each of its railroad lines potentially subject to abandonment; and(B) identify each railroad line for which the carrier plans to file an application for a certificate under subsection (a) of this section.
WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.
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