| History: | The Orange & Northwestern Railway Company, organized at Orange and chartered as a common carrier, had begun earlier as a logging tram northward from Orange into the pineries. The incorporators included Leopold Miller, H. J. Lutcher, W. H. Stark, C. W. Cole, and other prominent Orange lumber magnates. A 1901 Orange & Northwestern letterhead reveals that G. Bedell Moore was president; Alexander Gilmer, vice president; and W. W. Reid, secretary. Orange lumber companies using the line, among others, were the Newton Sawmill Company, Lutcher and Moore's Upper and Lower Mills, the Alexander Gilmer Lumber Company mill, and the Orange Paper Company (a private combination of Miller , Lutcher, and Stark interests).
Stretching north to Jasper and Newton counties, the railroad linked, at one time or another, Buna by 1902 (Kirby Mill R at Bessmay, Jasper County, about two miles north of Buna); Sanders-Trotti at Buna); S.M. Tomme and Sons, Gist, just north of Texla, Jasper County; Kirby Mill S, at Browndell (Weed), eighteen miles north of Jasper; both Adsul Lumber Company mills, one about three miles from Adsul, and the other just north of Call, in Newton County; Gulf & Northern Railroad (Wier Long Leaf Lumber Company at Wiergate, about two miles from Burkeville and seventeen miles from Newton) connected with the Orange & Northwestern Railway at Newton, in 1906; William Davidson Mill, one mile from Newton; J. Fleming Mill at Howard's Switch, about five miles north of Bleakwood, Newton County; Boynton Lumber Company, just east of Bleakwood, Newton County; E. E. McDonald Lumber Company, Bleakwood, five miles north of Kirbyville; C. E. Slade Logging Camp (Kirby and Miller-Vidor) at Quigley in Jasper County until 1909, then the Bunker Hill Logging Camp in Jasper County after 1909; and R. W. Wier at Texla, in Jasper County, twelve miles north of Orange.
W. E. Merrem, a Houston Oil Company executive, remembered that the road “was in bad shape. I rode it a number of times before we had automobiles and decent roads. It was really something to ride. They had no ballast on the roadbed, and it was so dusty you couldn't see from one end of the car to the other. It mostly handled sawmill products, which they picked up at Newton.”
Lumber was manufactured from long leaf pine timber from Calcasieu Parrish (La) and Newton County, floated down the Sabine River or overland from Jasper County by Kirby tram during low water. KLC used some of the L. Miller timberlands in Newton County, while Miller-Link used Kirby logs from Whitman's Bluff on the Sabine. It also received, beginning in 1905, 24 car loads of logs daily from C. E. Slade lagging camp at Quigley, Jasper County, on the Orange and Northwestern Railroad.
By September, 1908, Miller-Link was doing its own logging, according to the SILR. The tram lines were narrow gauge but the company intended to widen them to standard. Logs were brought by tram to the tracks of the Orange & Northwestern.
In 1956, the Orange & Northwestern became part of the Missouri Pacific network.
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