| History: | The Carter-Kelley Lumber Company log tramming operations terminus was Manning, the base for the company shortline, the Shreveport, Houston, & Gulf Railroad Company . In 1910, the rolling stock of the tapline line included four locomotives, one passenger coach, one combination mail- baggage-express car, and thirty-two freight cars. Of this rolling stock, three locomotives and thirty-one of the cars were leased to Carter-Kelley for use on its seven-mile logging tram.
Poland reported 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, these five engines and a Shay were maintained in a round house well equipped with a machine shop. 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 mill at Camden and another fourteen miles further to Camp Ruby in order to get logs.
N. B. Weatherford who clerked and bookkeeped many years for the Carter firm recalled that, in 1933, the Manning logging and tramming operations were combined with the W. T. Carter & Bro. operation at Camp Ruby, which had been established in 1925. Transferred, on May 1, 1933, to Camp Ruby from Manning were five locomotives, two Rapid Loaders, one American loader, seventy-five logging mules, two saddle horses, one shop car, one feed car, two living cars, and two cabooses. By 1934, logging tram mileage was in excess of fifty miles.
(Weatherford) Camp Ruby had a large commissary; a doctor's office; a barber shop; about twenty-five tenant houses for Whites, ten for Mexicans, and twenty-five “for the Colored families”; a post office; and a complete shop. Water from wells was used by all families. No mention was made about home electrification.
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