| Equipment: | 1893 to 1904: originally, wooden tramroads and animals. Eventually, upgrading with steam locomotives, steam loaders, logging cars, and more than twenty miles of railroad tracks. 1904: three locomotives, eight log cars, four miles of steel tram road.
1906: twelve miles operational and another fourteen under construction, four locomotives, 75 tram cars, and a steam loader. 1
1928: about 25 miles of tracks. Keeling: one geared, five rod locomotives and twenty-two miles of track |
| History: | This tramming operation probably began with the Cline & Oliphint sawmill as early as 1893. Tramroad were probably made of wooden rails and carts were towed by mules. Texas Lumber Tie & Timber Company bought out Cline and Oliphint by 1897. Its successor was Texas Tie & Lumber Company.
The tramroad under Texas Tie & Lumber Company was identified locally in Montgomery County records as the Gulf & Pacifc, but it is not to be confused with the incorporated roads with headquarters at Dallas and Sweetwater . The Texas Tie & Lumber tramroad was apparently never incorporated. Texas Tie & Lumber began improving its tram operations in order to effectively access its timber and began building a steel tramroad. The company, on August 16, 1901, bought from W. T. Carter & Bro of Camden, for $4,600, 145 tons of steel rails, which it had earlier bought from Keno Lumber in Keno: 55 tons of 35# street car rails, 63 tons of 40# rails, and 26 tons of 35# rails. Next, Texas Tie & Lumber began adding rolling stock. On August 23, 1902, Texas Tie & Lumber leased from F. M. Pease Co. of Illinois one standard-guage Mogul locomotive and tender to use on the tram road for twenty months. Pease Co., on October 4, 1902, leased to ten log cars for twenty months to the company. On March 15, 1904, Texas Tie & Lumber borrowed from Fitzhugh Lumber Company of Chicago a Baldwin locomotive (Known as Engine #9) to be used on the tram road (known as the Gulf & Pacific RR) for six months, until September 15, 1904; Texas Tie would return the $4,000 locomotive to St. Louis. On August 22, 1904, Texas Tie & Lumber Co, in bankruptcy, with W. A. Smith as Trustee, defaulted on a $4500 note to H. Masterson, who was acting for Foster Lumber. Masterson bid $500 at sheriff's auction and Smith sold the mill to him. On December 15, 1904, H. Masterson transferred to Foster Lumber the entire tram and plant of Texas Tie & Lumber Co for $17,750. This included eight miles of tram rails on the Gulf & Pacific tramroad, headquarterd at Clinesburg (later Fostoria), one Baldwin locomotive No. 13002 (locomotive No. 2), ten log cars, and 35 mules.
Foster Lumber, which apparently never used the title of Gulf & Pacific for its tramroad, began expanding its operations. In 1906, the American Lumberman reported that the company had twelve miles of tracks, four locomotives, seventy-five cars, and one American steam loader. Another fourteen miles of tracks were under construction. The Southern Industrial and Lumber Review in March 1909 reported that Foster Lumber Company at Fostoria was reaching the limit of its tram road to the northern pineries. The logging engines were traveling eighteen miles one way to bring sawtimber to the mill. The company is building a standard gauge tram road to southern pineries, which are much closer to the mill. The line will run from Fostoria on the Santa Fe to Midline on the Houston East & West Texas. This line traverses almost four hundred million feet of lumber as it crosses Liberty, Harris, and Montgomery counties. The tracks will be well-ballasted and constituted of heavy steel rails.
By 1924, the plant was cutting second growth stumpage, and the machinery of the short side of the pine mill was used to build a hardwood mill, suplied by timber from San Jacinto and Liberty counties. The company was using twenty-five miles of tracks in 1928. As trucking became cost-effective in the later 1930s, Foster's use of tram railways were gradually eliminated.
Keeling lists the company with one geared locomotive and five rod locomotives operating on twenty-two miles of track. |