Research: Tram & Railroad Database

Code: 57
Corporate Name: Livingston & Southeastern Railway Company
Folk Name:
Incorporated:
Ownership: Knox Lumber Company
Years of Operation: 1903 to 1913
Track Type:
Standard Gauge Wooden Rails
Track Length: Seven to ten
Locations Served: Knox (aka Soda) Polk
Counties of Operation: Polk
Line Connections:
Track Information:
Tram Road Logging / Industrial Common Carrier Logging Camp
Equipment: Ten miles of standard gauge. Strapac noted five locomotives that operated on this road.
History: Knox Lumber Company, ownership by W. H. Knox and son, Hiram Knox, operated a sawmill at Knox, Polk County, with Soda as its post office, from 1903 to 1911. The Beaumont Journal noted that the Knoxes were operating a large tramroad by 1905. Such a road was necessary, for the mill was cutting 150,000 daily by 1906. The Knoxes would operate their sawmill, tramroad, and company town until 1911, by which year they had cut out the timber. They moved on to East Mayfield, a suburb of Hemphill, in Sabine County. The Knoxes chartered the Livingston & Southeastern Railway Company in December, 1903 as a common carrier and abandoned the road in 1913, according to Reed. The Knoxes, reported the Polk County Enterprise, on May 16, 1907, wanted to connect their mill with the Carlisle-Pennel mill at Livingston. Zlatkovich records that the road was about ten miles long, being built almost another three miles east of Knox to Milepost 2.8 in 1906. He, too, states that the road was abandoned in 1913. The American Lumberman, in 1906, reported the road was eight miles long, built to standard gauge, with another eight miles under construction. Another eight miles were under construction. W. H. Knox was president and a named named Dallas, general manager. On May 13, 1909, the Polk County Enterprise reported that Hiram Knox used his train to take a gathering of people from the HE&WT connection at Livingston on “a moon light picnic” out to the mill. The guests played games at the company hotel “until supper was announced. Lunches had been prepared by the ladies in the crowd and it was indeed a feast that was enjoyed by the entire party.”