| History: | Neither St. Clair G. Reed nor Charles Zlatkovich note in their works the Elmina & Eastern Transportation Company tramroad. It belonged to the Walker County Lumber Company, which cut timber, milled sawlogs, and shipped timber for thirty years to Elmina, in Walker County.
The Walker County Lumber Company tram operatio had its beginning in the old Oliphant Lumber Company tram at Elmina, then known as Oliphant's Switch. Oliphant had bought some track equipment, including a small Porter-Bell tram engine, no later than 1894, from Sam Allen and Company's facility at Mulvey, in Polk County. The Walker County Bills of Sale records note that the equipment, besides the engine, included wooden tram road on Mrs. E. C. Fisher's land on the Lem Collard League., twenty-one oxen, eight log cars, and three log wagons. Also in that year, John T. Carter and J. C. Collard sold to Trinity River Lumber Company, sold timber and right of wlay privileges for a tram road on property they owned in the W. W. McGary survey as did C. D. Oliphant and T. W. Oliphant with their property on the Daniel Toler survey. The Daniel Toler route would cross Little Creek, about a mile southeast of New Waverly.
By 1902, Oliphant, who was by then operating the Oliphant- Elmina sawmill under lease from the Trinity River Lumber Company, owned at least ten tram cars as part of the rolling stock. Trinity River Lumber Company eventually resumed operations when the Oliphant lease expired.
On November 14, 1904, Thomas S. Foster, president of Walker County Lumber Company, bought the Elmina & Eastern Transportation Company from Walker County Lumber Company for $50,000 (50 notes at $1,000 each). Equipment included a twenty-eight ton locomotive (No. 101) and twenty-six log cars. Foster agreed to pay rental on eight miles of thirty-five pound tracks, which were owned by the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe. The tramroad charged Walker County Lumber Company $1 per car for carrying logs over the tracks.
In 1906, the American Lumberman noted that the Elmina & Eastern Transportation Company operated fifteen miles of narrow gauge railroad over which three locomotives and fifty-three cars rolled. W. B. Clint was the vice-president and auditor. In 1910, Thomas S. Foster defaulted to the company on his notes and deeded the tramroad back to Walker County Lumber, which included ten miles of tracks from Elmina into the Walker and San Jacinto counties, the locomotive No. 101, and twenty-six narrow gauge cars.
Keeling lists the Elmina and Eastern Transportation Company of the Walker County Lumber Company at Elmina with one geared and six rod locomotives. |