Having taken 43 pictures of the exposed rail tie and patch in the road, I moved north on Buddy Doyle until I got to La.10. I took a brief ride west on 10 and then did a U-turn and headed back east, toward the La.10 portion of town. Then I saw the black cemetery shown on my 1947 map. The cemetery has an interesting name, "Canada Memorial Gardens". I visited it a few years back and I was amazed at the number of veterans interred there. The stones reflected the obvious pride these men had in defending our country. That pride and love for our country obviously still exist within our armed services. As far as the rest of our population, there is a likewise obvious faction that neither has pride in, nor loves the United States. If you can't say you are an American first and put America first, get the hell out and go back to wherever you owe allegiance. Go "change" it, asshole.
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After leaving the cemetery, I took La.112 south, as I was thinking about going home. The GPS alerted me that 112 goes west and that would not be a good thing. I saw Main Line Road down south and decided to check it out. It had to be the "main line" for the timber operations.
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It angles from the mill down into the depths of the pine forest which is called West Bay WMA. I believe West Bay was the original name of Oakdale. There's a story there. It may have to do with the Calcasieu River, I'll betcha.
Main line sure looked like a ROW.
Here's looking west to where it hooks up with Old Bay and the Old Oakdale Road.
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Looking east, it is not as well traveled. Oh did it pull me. But, being by myself, I held back the urge. Damn, I'm getting old.
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Everett added this:
Main Line Road will take you all the way to Kinder. At the south end it was the main line of the old Kinder and Northwestern RR which was owned by the same Peavy interests as Peason. They had a mill at Kinder. The north end of the road was the mainline for one of the Industrial Lumber Co Railroad spurs, and I think that they met in the middle.
Being that 112 would not work, I U-turned and headed back up the road. I decided to do one more run through. Actually, I did a couple.
This is Hampton Memorial Cemetery, south of town. I don't know if it has any connection to the mill or not.
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Where "Entrance" is marked on the map is where the next 2 pictures were taken. It is the location, inside and out, of the paper mill fence. The gate would be on my right in this "inside" shot.
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Outside of the gate you can see the ROW of the J&E west of the mill town, looking east.
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West of 112, still on Main Street west of town, I found this pad. It is outside the view of either of my maps. It was something? There was a large pad with a cement road leading to it. There was also an occupied mobile home. I U-turned, quickly.
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The next pictures are from La.10. I had ridden back up to 10 on 112. That cut sure did look interesting.
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The green lined road is La.10. I turned east looking for where the rails had crossed the road. Right click, open in new window.
The old rail crossing is west of the highway creek crossing.
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Now, do you want to see one of the engines that worked for the mill?
"This 1912 prairie Baldwin locomotive originally worked for Industrial Lumber in Louisiana as #101. It was later renumbered to #5. It was then sold to Calcasieu Paper and operated in Elizabeth, Louisiana. The last time this locomotive operated was in 1964 when a Mr. Witbeck ran it on the Calcasieu Paper Co.'s spur after the locomotive was retired. Although five years older, this is the sister locomotive to Fort Edmonton's #107 which also worked for the Calcasieu Paper Company. At some point both locomotives came to Alberta. #107 went to Fort Edmonton, while #5 was kept in a steel barn in Lougheed, Alberta and was owned by Mr. Ronald Bergseth. In the spring of 2005, Gordon Bell took ownership of the locomotive and relocated it to his railway roundhouse at Three-Valley Gap Lake Chateau and Heritage Ghost Town. While under the ownership of Mr. Bergseth, the locomotive carried the road number #69".
Photo Credit: Roman Krizek (June 25, 2007)
Location: Three Valley Gap (between Revelstoke and Craigellachie)
Type: 2-6-2
Builder: Baldwin
Number: 38219
Year Built: 1912
Weight: n/a
Current Owner: Three Valley Gap Museum
Use: logging/switching
Current Status: Static Display
This information came from HERE.
Everett, upon seeing this engine, quickly ripped his file drawer open and produced this with yet another bundle of priceless information:
The picture you show is of Calcasieu Long Leaf Lumber #69. It ended up on Rapides Gravel Co. RR and went to John Thompson in Illinois who sold it to Mr. Bergseth. My information states that Mr. Bergseth still owns the engine, but my memory tells me that he sold it but I don't remember to who. At any rate, a lot of people get these 3 engines confused on the basis of confusion between Calcasieu Long Leaf Lumber and Calcasieu Paper Co.
[This is one more of the] remaining Industrial Lumber and Calcasieu Paper engines. The information on the engines that you have is correct in most of its essentials, but I can flesh it out a bit. When Calcasieu Paper shut down, #107 was sold to a local man at Elizabeth, Mr. Harold L., who operated it on a piece of the J & E that went across his farm. He later sold it to Edmonton. It is now in operation there.
Calcasieu #5 (in his photo) is currently on display at the Ameristar Casino in K.C. Mo. It looks like this today.
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An old ad.
A new ad.
Life goes on in the Louisiana piney woods.
I exited town, going east on La.10, always watching the ghost rails of the J&E off to the south. I saw a road that met the rails. I stopped and asked a fella that was parked there if the road was private. He said it was. We talked for an hour, him interlacing fishing and hunting stories with Elizabeth stories. Seems he is quite the native of Elizabeth and had almost been run over by the train when his pickup stalled on the tracks. He said some guy owned the whole J&E right of way from Oakdale to past Elizabeth, just the ROW. That would make a very narrow lot. He also told me that the union had blown up the gas pipeline to the mill during the riots and that he'd caught 2 huge catfish at Bundicks. One was 45 lbs and the other 48. He had the pictures. After an hours I finally insisted I had to leave. He winked and asked that we keep all that between us so I left out the good stuff.
No one reads this stuff anyway.
Below are some interesting links:
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3, the best for last, W.T. Block