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Logging Railroads of Alabama by Thomas Lawson Jr
Logging Railroads of Alabama by Thomas Lawson Jr
Hard Cover
277 pages
Copyright 1996
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
Interstate Loggers and Others Around the Northern Third1
CHAPTER 2
In the Valley of the Coosa21
CHAPTER 3
A Few Along the Tallapoosa40
CHAPTER 4
Tuscaloosa, and Westward45
CHAPTER 5
Down the Black Warrior55
CHAPTER 6
Sumter (With No "p") and Choctaw Country63
CHAPTER 7
In the Heart of the Heart of Dixie79
CHAPTER 8
Interior Autauga and Chilton Counties 91
CHAPTER 9
Monroe and Eastern Wilcox Counties99
CHAPTER 10
Betwixt the Alabama and the Tombigbee112
CHAPTER 11
Along the Mobile & Montgomery (L&N RR)137
CHAPTER 12
On the Alabama & Florida Division of the L&N161
CHAPTER 13
Loggers in the Wiregrass173
CHAPTER 14
Mobile Bay, East and West178
CHAPTER 15
The Southwestern Corner, Mobile and Washington Counties193
CHAPTER 16
Mill Switching Only and Florida Interstate Loggers213
CHAPTER 17
Rumors, Maybes and Might-Have-Beens217
The Locomotive Rosters220
Bibliography 265
Acknowledgements267
Index269
DUST JACKET INTRODUCTION
For nearly 70 years, the virgin pine forests of Alabama echoed daily to the lonesome whistles of logging railroad steam engines hard at work. The iron horses belched clouds of wood smoke accompanied by a heavy exhaust as they pulled their countless trainloads of logs to booming sawmills stretching from the Cumberland Plateau south to the Mobile River Delta.
Today, the log trains have long vanished along with the primeval forest. All is quiet. However, the rich heritage has not been forgotten. This book will serve as a memorial to the many thousands of white, black and Native American Alabamians who toiled in the deep woods under great hardship and danger to insure a better life for their children.
The early day loggers found the primeval Alabama pine forest canopy so thick that at high noon it was like twilight on the forest floor. There was little or no scrub, just a deep bed of pine needles. Wild game including bears, panthers and deer were abundant. It was a natural paradise ripe for exploitation.
Reconstruction following the Civil War established the Alabama timber industry. Returning Confederate soldiers began clearing the forest to sell the timber, as well as to farm. Early logging was done by ox or mule teams dragging the felled trees to either a portable sawmill set up in the woods, or to a dammed creek or hand-dug ditch. Where water was involved, the logs would then be floated downstream to a holding pond with a spillway.
At the pond, the logs would be assembled and linked together with heavy chains to form a "boom." Then, during periods of high water, the spillway would be opened and the log boom would float down the waterway until it reached a sawmill. The logs would then be hauled out and cut into lumber to be sold. Riding a log boom downstream on a flooding river was not for the faint of heart.
As the Alabama timber industry rapidly expanded in the 1880's, it soon became apparent that the most efficient means of supplying logs to a sawmill on a regular, dependable schedule was by railroad. Thus, in a few short years, rails began snaking through the piney woods opening up millions of acres of prime timberland across the state. Fortunes were to be made in clearing the forest.
Over the flimsy rails, hastily spiked to freshly-cut wood ties laid in a sandy clay roadbed, came the log train, with its clanging rods, groaning wheels and clouds of steam and smoke. Across creaking wooden trestles, up steep grades and around tight curves, no virgin forest was safe from its relentless path. Wasteful "cut-out, get-out" timber harvesting had arrived.
Logging was done by hand. Two-man crosscut saws and axes were the primary tools. Once felled, the 500-year-old trees were dragged by ox or mule teams to a spur line branching out into the wilderness from the main tracks leading back to the sawmill. At the railhead, a steam loader would swing the logs onto the waiting train. Eventually, the logs would reach the whirling sawmill blades.
Life in the isolated log camps offered brutal hard work, long hours and low pay. The men and animals worked from dawn to dusk, six days a week. The workers lived in large, wood camp cars mounted on railroad wheels so they could be switched from one site to another as logging progressed. The only women in camp were the wives of the supervisors. The camps were tiny communities nearly lost in the deep woods.
Since logging railroads passed through virtual wilderness, they became a lifeline and touch to civilization in the areas they served. It was always an occasion to celebrate when an old box car or passenger coach filled with supplies and carrying the payroll arrived in camp. Fresh laborers would climb down from the car and be replaced with tired ones returning to their families, or the riotous "payday night" in a sawmill town bar.
Overloaded trains, hotboxes, washouts, derailments, collapsed trestles, landslides, boiler explosions, bad track, stray animals, collisions, run-aways, unsafe equipment, poor brakes and other hazards combined with a general lack of discipline, occasional bad judgement and streaks of independence on the part of the train crews made logging railroads extremely dangerous places to work.
A typical train would consist of an engine and as many log cars as it could pull. The log cars were often connected by long timbers with link-and-pin couplers on each end. Usually, only the engine had steam or air brakes. Since grading and embankments were kept to an absolute minimum due to the temporary nature of the track, the rails tended to run up one hill and down the next. For the train crews, it made for a hair-raising ride.
Although it was strictly against sawmill rules to drink on the job, many train crews kept a jug of potent moonshine on hand to ward off timber rattlesnake bites. Missing fingers were commonplace due to being pinched-off by the link-and-pin couplers. Plus, fast moving log trains occasionally struck wandering deer or stray oxen, wild cattle and hogs resulting in nasty smash-ups. Snakes would also occasionally drop onto the train from upper limbs scattering the laborers riding the logs.
If a train crew had to "join the birds," as jumping from a moving train was known, they risked hitting trackside stumps and rolling back under the iron wheels, or breaking their arms and legs at best. If the train crew stayed on their engine, they risked being crushed by the logs behind, or being scalded to death by steam escaping from the wrecked engine. In truth, they had no place to hide from the deadly perils that faced them daily.
A major danger were boiler explosions. Logging railroads often purchased old, nearly worn-out engines from other larger railroads and worked the last miles out of them with a minimum of maintenance. One particularly violent explosion on the Escambia Railway in 1911 saw a burst boiler break the engine's driving axles, then top a 90-foot pine tree. The bell was found over one mile away. Low water was the train crew's nightmare.
Perhaps, the greatest logging railroad nuisance were derailments. So many derailments occurred on the average Alabama logging railroad that rerailing the engines and cars became almost routine. Most engines in the deep woods carried large, heavy rerailing frogs, plus cables, wood blocks and other gear to aid in getting back on the track. Light rail, rotten ties and dirt roadbed were all too commonplace.
Accidents in the forest were often cruel to the injured logger or train crew member. Doctors and a clinic were often only available at the sawmill town. With no communications, if the tracks were blocked, help could be a long time coming. Many good men died under a log or were left crippled for life due to the lack of prompt medical care.
But, logging railroad train crews were as hard as their iron horses and they mostly survived the rigors of their jobs to tell stories to their grandchildren. Although safety was a long time coming to the deep woods, logging railroadmen seemed to enjoy a cat's "nine-lives." In general, they were a "cut-above" their fellow woodsmen and sawmill hands. The train crews got the logs to the sawmills on schedule despite all the dangers.
Without a doubt, the most envied member of the logging railroad train crew was the engineer, better known as the "hogger." Just as many youngsters in the sawmill town wanted to grow up to be an engineer, so did most of the other woodsmen and sawmill hands want to try their hand on the throttle and feel the locomotive's power.
The hogger was often the highest paid man in the woods, besides the camp supervisors, and had responsibilities to match. However, this deep woods "Casey Jones" is best remembered today for sending melodious whistle blasts through the wilderness signaling the approaching log train to the deer, bears and panthers in its path. With a wave of his gloved hand, he and his swaying train rumbled by over rickety track into the mist with another load of logs for the sawmill at the end of the line.
To the hogger, his engine was the center of his life. She took him to work in the woods; baked him in the
summer, but kept him cozy in the winter; was his home away from home; and gave him the power of many hundreds of horses at the tug of the throttle. Although his battered, leaky old engine may have once been a mainline queen, the hogger still loved her nonetheless. Her whistle and bell were his calling cards.
Alabama logging railroads peaked around 1910 and then began to slowly fade away as more and more sawmills cut-out, or went bankrupt from collapsed lumber markets domestically and overseas. In economy moves, trucks replaced some logging railroads, but The Great Depression in the 1930's dealt the final blow. As most of the remaining sawmills blew the last, long whistle signaling permanent shutdown, their rod and geared steam engines accompanied by the loaders and empty log cars were set aside for dismantling.
A few fortunate locomotives would survive to find new owners and another decade or two of service, but most of the obsolete logging railroad equipment scattered across the state had been cut up for scrap by World War Two. Only a handful of locomotives survived in southwest Alabama by the mid-1950's, mostly saved by preservation-minded sawmill families. The last miles of rusty track had been pulled up and an era was over. All logs now rode on trucks.
Today, little remains except vanishing memories. Deep in the reforested woods, timber cruisers use the old logging railroad grades to drive on. Some camps have evolved into small communities, most others are long forgotten and lost to the underbrush. Plus, a few rotting camp cars can still be found on farms where they ended their days as sheds and chicken coops.
Of the nearly 900 logging railroad steam engines that once worked in Alabama, only 12 survive as reminders of a glorious past. The next time you take a walk in the state's piney woods, take a second, close your eyes, sniff the wind and listen. Just maybe you will smell a trace of wood smoke and hear the muffled wail of a far away whistle as a log train traces the pale blue sky. With a full head of steam, it's bound for Glory.
Louis Zadnichek II Fairhope, Alabama
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