AR Logtown

 First, the research paper below is the sister of  THIS ONE on the Gurdon to Norman Branch.
A better one on the Gurdon to Norman can be found HERE. This one has the old pictures.


 I'm back again. I'd left this one because the boiler had gone cold, displaced by that old question"Why".  "Why was answered this afternoon, a quiet Sunday one, with, "Because".
That out of the way, here is where I left off, or rather began where I would leave it.  Yes, it might be best not to expect too much. Heck, I've even forgotten where all the info and pictures are. I'll be back in a moment.

Found them, The folder was named "Waldron to Heavener" or possibly the reverse.. Many railroad people, I know three, have heard of, or been to Heavener. One has been to Waldron on much the same trip this research report will take us. Yes, I'm going along as your guide or you'd get lost in Outback Arkansas / Oklahoma which I wouldn't mind as being lost has been the highlight of my life. I once did a website called "Two Wheelin' La.& Miss."  The inscription below the title read, "Lost down a Back Road and Loving It". Some woman wanted to use it on t-shirts she was selling.  She charmed me to such an extent that I forgot to tell her to put my picture on them.

I know, I have lost focus on this one.

OK, let's put on our serious railroad enthusiast, history hunt game faces and Metamusal strain to stay interested. Pretend a final test on this material is tomorrow. Or, just look at the pictures .... Charley Brown.

My interest started like this. I had found the Arkansas Railroad Club's abandoned website where all of their newsletters in PDF form were stashed, ready for download. I cannot tell you, or express, relay, or relate the amount of information that find provided.    I sent 00-L a picture and caption found in the annals of that defunct club.

I knew that "KCS" would catch his attention. It did mine.

 

 
I must have been bored.  Yep, look I said  I had nothing to do.

OO-L 

 Philip's comments were a bed of clues. I had nothing to do, so being an Arkansas fan, I pursued them.  I was hitting rock bottom when 00-L suggested using "KCS + the names of the places on the railroad" as search terms. The dam broke.

Yes, another oldie goldie, but it persists until today.  In 00-L's words, WATCO  will buy anything.

The easiest thing for me to do would be to go to Google Earth and follow the route.

Waldron depot's location. This is where the depot was.

  

This was Waldron's depot. The little white house in the background is gone, but the larger one behind it is the one above.  The farm feed business is also gone.

 

As the hunt began, just tidbits were found. After using "KCS" instead of "Arkansas Western" it became more frantic.00-L explained that the railroad was known as the "KCS" and that "Arkansas Western" was a "paper company". The engines were KCS. I was fishing too deep trying to be "exact".

 

These are clippings from numerous articles.

The Louisiana. Arkansas & Texas Railway was purchased by and became a part of the Louisiana & Arkansas Railway Company July 1, 1939. The Kansas City Southern Railway Company obtained control of the Louisiana & Arkansas Railway Company on October 20, 1939, and operated as two separate entities under one management until they were merged July 6, 1992, as The Kansas City Southern Railway Company. Four wholly owned branch line subsidiaries were also merged into KCS on this date, July 6, 1992: Kansas and Missouri Railway and Terminal Company (K&M); Fort Smith and Van Buren Railway Company (FS&VB); Arkansas Western Railway Company (A&W); and. Maywood and Sugar Creek Railway Company (Maywood).

I found mile posts  and depots / flag stops. Notice "Hon", you will be there when do the rail ride. Remember, it's the last stop before Waldron coming from Heavener.  The timetable below also notes the stops after Waldron on the way down to Forester, the notable lumber mill town featured in this thing.

Waldron was the original terminal, or almost.
Forester was added when the mill took shape. All the details later. In fact there will be way too much on Forester for the one person I know who likes old lumber mill history. He's the one of the two that might not have been to Heavener.
 

And more information on the RR.

I have no idea where this little deal came from . But, you can see that Forester was not a factor at this point as the end of the line was 1.2 miles past town.

 

These are merger dates for the inquiring rail historian.

Just the mention of Waldron rates a table.
 


A quote by a lazy forum participant or his shift key was not working.



"the 270 bridge", was that the one above?

It would spur me on. We'll get to Forester in a while.  Speed limit on the RR was 10 miles an hour.. This post will progress with similar "speed".


This is a repeat for the purpose of spurring you on.
Don't place names make you want to be there?



Well here we go, the reason for the table above.

Our train, led by old faithful F7 KCS 76, pulls into Bates, location of the Bates Hotel.
It is hotter than Hell in summertime Arkansas / Oklahoma. Don't worry, the door won't let any AC out.

Bates




Cauthron
Ever go out to the road to get your mail and cars approach?  Instead of staring at the windshields like some deer in the headlights, you turn away. Horses do the same thing or old  76 was just too ugly to look at. Smoke, they were straining. (That and more knowledge, later).



Zoomed in a little.  . The track had a 10 mph limits, as mentioned,  so to Forester and back was a full day.



Heavener

I got very interested in Heavener, finding much more about it, most left out, with pictures.
These train guys go on and on about this and that which if I quoted would extend this page endlessly. It's pretty endless already as what I found out about Forester should stand alone but, you know me, I just keep piling it on.






"95, above, is seen below.
From a forum.

The photo below was taken in Heavener just northeast of the engine house looking to the southwest, sometime before 1984.

Culled info from some forum.

Somewhat quoting this guy who had a familiar name, "The AW (Arkansas Western branch to Waldron, AR) required two F-units as the max speed was 10 mph and there had to be enough power to climb the small grades without  being able to get a run at them. The South Local had two GP30's and the North Local had two GP7/9 at this time. Mena had a GP for a switcher. It would often come to Heavener on weekends for service ..... "

That's where the "10 mph" originated.

"Number 71 is an F7, the old orange looking engine much like 76 seen at Bates.

KCS 95 is an F3, the white engine also with the door "cracked".

The black unit behind 95 is one of the GP7's.  Some thought it a MP engine but it's not.
"GP 7" mentioned above.



.This is the yard at Heavener.



Below,  you can get your bearing as to where the heck all this is.
About 1/4 down the page following the snaking black line(KCS RR) from Fort Smith you see Heavenor in OK and Waldron in AR"



Before we move on, I have all these Heavener pictures. A lot of them are from GE. South to North. Depot and KCS.

A side note. The depot seems to have been the same architecture as the KCS depot in Baton Rouge, "50's Modern"?



From Google ... Same train .



OO-L said he'd eaten there. No rating.



Some rabid RR man had posted this shot. I include it here because of the one below. it.
I love the "F- Units"  Their reincarnation as the CF-7's was so cool. The fact that they are disappearing is not cool.


Now this is cool.  It's the same engine. Explanation is below. LZ said Lamb had done some great pictures. Seek out his collection.



 
 The Waldron Branch has been leased by Watco. Tyson has a huge plant there.

 
Murphy is a trainchaser.  He makes movies and uploaded this one to You Tube.
I took pictures while watching it.

He started with this train pulling into Waldron.




 

 

 

 

This is where I surmised the Tyson info.

 

 

 

I "drove around" a little shoots these important shots.

 

I wanted to make the point that western Arkansas, is the beginning of "The West".  Many parts, such as Waldron, resemble The Great Plains.But, as you leave Arkansas going into Oklahoma, there are more mountains, the subject of my next investigation.

Looking West in Waldron, Tyson is in the distance.

 

Looking East toward the location of the old depot.

 

Past there the rails curve South.

 

They end just before where they crossed AR Hwy.80, the road to Danville. They went to Forester.

 

At that point we'll turn around and go back west to catch the train back to Heavener.
We'll pass an old warehouse of was it the freight depot?

 

Leaving Waldron. Remember Hon is the first crossing west of town.

 



Am I wrong or do those engines look MP?
 

At the border.

 

Looking East.
Why did the road surface change past the sign. I think the sign is in OK.



Looking West.
Evidently, when entering OK, the road goes up. That is because it is coming out of the Line Creek Valley. 



The train is climbing, also.


 

 

The train has to have crossed some pretty country having gone through the national forest.





 



 I cannot find Two Mile Creek. It has to be in the forest.
 


That was fun, wasn't it?

This from the bridge picture at the very top.
 


 




Note the location of Hazel Creek. It is where the high trestle was.



Below you can see how the railroad got through the mountains.


 

 Then I found this site which I'll replicate here. The "Fair" name may ring a bell. He may have done one on the KCS / L&A which I have.

 









Once again.




More and More and More:

Forester (Scott County)

Forester was a self-contained sawmill town owned by the Caddo River Lumber Company. It was founded and built by Thomas Whitaker Rosborough in 1930 in southeastern Scott County. At first, a prominent Waldron (Scott County) businessman wanted the mill built in his town, but after hearing that Rosborough intended to employ African Americans, this businessman was happy with the chosen location and later was instrumental in getting the railroad extended from Waldron into Forester. The mill became the largest and most productive in the state, with its huge lumber shed measuring eighty feet wide and 1,000 feet long and storing millions of board feet of kiln-dried, planed lumber.
The town was named after Waldron businessman Charles A. Forrester. Contractors logged the mill with mule teams and wagons until 1940, when the company purchased trucks. After all the largest timber was cut, Caddo River sold the town of Forester to Dierks Lumber and Coal in 1945, and the company continued to operate until there was insufficient timber for a mill of its size.
The town was laid out in sections rather than streets. The main part was known as Green Town, and the second largest was called Angel Town. There was also Cannon Town, Water Tank Road, the Section Houses, and Happy Holler, the smallest section. The population of Forester in 1940 was 1,306, including about 350 black residents living in their own section of rustic, red-stained houses called “the Quarters.” They had their own school, church, and an entertainment center called the Barrel House but shared the store, post office, and theater with the white residents.
The company provided houses, schools, churches, a theater, a post office, a drugstore, a barber/beauty shop, a twenty-eight-room hotel, a depot, a garage with car sales, a ballpark and stadium, a community hall/Masonic Lodge, and the company store. Forester had its own water system and power plant, and there was free healthcare for all, provided by a company-paid doctor. Forester had very little crime and only employed two town marshals in the twenty-year life of the town.
Future Harlem Globetrotter Reese “Goose” Tatum reportedly played for a baseball team in Forester for a summer as a young man.
In 1952, the mill closed, and the whole town was moved or torn down, being sold to various companies and individuals. This forced the people to relocate and seek employment elsewhere. Many sawmill towns in Arkansas have shut down over the years, but Forester is the only one known to have its people return year after year for a reunion.
The Forester Historical Society began maintaining a reunion park at the log pond in 1983. The nine-acre reunion park at the sawmill site is now a recreation park as the result of work being done by various organizations, volunteer workers, the Forester Historical Society, and former residents. The park includes camping facilities, memorials, a large sign at the pavilion with photos of Forester residents, and a one-and-one-half-mile-long interpretive trail.



Now. Yes you can camp there and it is the site for the yearly reunion.



-------------------------------
Added stuff:

Forester,  Evatt said.
There is free primitive camping at the site year-round and is especially popular during deer hunting season. Deer are fairly plentiful in the area.
Though Forester was young and short-lived for a town, the area was settled long ago, Evatt said. The Fourche LaFave River flows just to the north. This is near its beginnings, the meandering river that works its way to join the Arkansas River near Bigelow.
First residents reached the Big Cedar, Harvey and Parks communities in the 1840s, and the Big Cedar Cemetery a mile from Forester has headstones from the 1800s until 1950.
Old Forester Park is a couple of miles down a gravel road from Highway 28. You pick your way to it, as signs are lacking.
At the park, a visitor can open a Coke, fix a sandwich and listen to wind rustling in the pines that have replaced those logged a half century ago.
Quiet takes over. Bird calls become frequent, with the many species of woods-dwelling warblers sounding off.
Should the birds suddenly fall silent, look carefully around. This is prime bear country, too.

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I copied a lot from this old book.
 
 

 


 


 

 

 

 



 

 




 

 

 

 

 



 


 
 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 
 


 

 
 

 

 

































The subject of the next map was an epiphany.




This connects an earlier research project that I did on the line from Gurdon to Norman.
The fact that the two mill town railroads were connected, not only in ownership, but by actual rail for a short time, was a surprise to put it mildly.   I'll continue this on another page. Below is an excerpt.

Done with this chapter.