Research: Tram & Railroad Database

Code: 18
Corporate Name: Shreveport, Houston & Gulf R. R.Co.
Folk Name:
Incorporated:
Ownership: Carter - Kelley Lumber Company
Years of Operation: 1906 to ca. 1938
Track Type:
Standard Gauge Wooden Rails
Track Length: 8 to 60
Locations Served: Prestridge Angelina
Counties of Operation: Angelina (tapline). Into Polk (tramline).
Line Connections:
Track Information:
Tram Road Logging / Industrial Common Carrier Logging Camp
Equipment: 1906: four locomotives, standard-gauge tracks. 1910: four locomotives, one passenger coach, one combination mail-baggage-Express car, and thirty-two logging cars. Keeling: six rod locomotives over twelve miles.
History: The stockholders of the Carter-Kelley Lumber Company incorporated the Shreveport, Houston, & Gulf R. R. Co. on June 19, 1906, to service its sawmill operation at Manning, Angelina County. Construction began immediately. Nicknamed the “Shove Hard and Grunt,” the railway connected with the Texas & New Orleans and the Cotton Belt at Prestridge, just south of Huntington, running nine miles further south to the mill at Manning. The expectation was to extend the line into Tyler County and possibly to Beaumont. Rolling stock and tracks, according to the American Lumberman in 1906, included included four locomotives running over a standard gauge road. In 1910, the rolling stock included four locomotives, one passenger coach, one combination mail- baggage-express car, and thirty-two freight cars. Three of the locomotives and thirty-one of the cars were leased to Carter-Kelley for use on its seven-mile logging tram. Twice-daily trains ran from Manning to Prestridge and back, hauling lumber, express, mail, other freight, and passengers. More than eight percent of the haulage belonged to Carter-Kelley interests. Poland, a high school history teacher who organized his students to research the history of Manning, wrote that the daily work train into the woods returned each night with the loggers, or “flatheads,” as they were known. Using cabbage-head smokestacks to retard the cinders from the locomotives, at least five engines and a Shay were maintained in a round house well equipped with a machine shop. Effie Boon believed that steam skidders were not used in logging operations, but Poland reports they and log loaders were employed until the snaking cables had so badly damaged the trees that the equipment was abandoned for logging. Both the two-wheel high cart and the eight-wheel Martin wagon were used in Manning logging operations. Toward the end of the Manning operation, its tramroads ran south to the Carter Lumber Company mill at Camden and another fourteen miles further to Camp Ruby in order to get logs. Reed states that the railroad was abandoned by 1937, after the timber holdings adjacent to the mill had been cut out. Zlatkovich states the year was 1938 when the road was abandoned.