| History: | The Angelina & Neches River R. R. Company, an active railroad in 1994 still handling rolling stock for a Lufkin paper mill, began before 1890 as an unincorporated logging tram road of Angelina County Lumber Company. It ran from its connection at Keltys with the Cotton Belt into the timberlands. J. T. King, a railroad man of experience, according to the Galveston Daily News, in 1890, was operating the steam locomotive, the Edna Ewing, over five and a half miles of tram tracks.
The beginnings of the Angelina and Neches River Railroad Company are unknown. Two alternative suggestions are that it began with the Ewing & Son tram operation that ran one geared locomotive over a narrow gauge wooden track. Another is the Lufkin South & Southeastern Railway Company, incorporated in 1892 and operating until at least 1896, by local county lumbermen and owners included the Angelina County Lumber Company, the Clawson Lumber Company, and the Lufkin Manufacturing Company.
The Angelina & Neches River R. R. Company was incorporated on August 23, 1900, by Angelina County Lumber Company, with headquarters at Keltys, Angelina County. The railroad handled tapline transportation to the Cotton Belt and the Houston East & West Texas as well as tram logging and spur operations in Angelina and Nacogdoches counties. By 1906, B. F. Nelson superintended a ten-mile standard-gauge track with rolling stock of four locomotives and twenty-eight cars. The railroad's inventory stood at one locomotive, three box cars, and a passenger car in 1910. The remaining rolling stock had been transferred to the parent company in order to avoid state safety laws. Passenger service began that year, but the Texas Railroad Commission did not recognize the railroad as a common carrier until the next year. The railroad connected with the Houston East & West Texas at Prosser in 1911 and reached Chireno, in Nacogdoches County, thirty-one miles from Keltys the next year. Prosser was also a logging front. Another fifteen miles of unincorporated tram road pushed on from Naclina into the timber.
Two of the logging camps were located at Camp Nancy, which closed in 1930 and was moved to Acol. Camp Nancy, near Zavalla, housed two hundred loggers and operated a company commissary. Paul Hursey, the first industrial forester employed in Texas when he went to work for Angelina County Lumber, reported that Camp Nancy tram-building operations, with the use of slip scrapers and mule teams, required the ability to pick up and lay down eight miles of track a day. At Acol, the tram engines burned pine knots for fuel while the mainline locomotives used oil. Logging operations there “used mules and trucks to haul logs to the railroad,” where they were loaded with McGifford rapid loaders. Hursey recalled, “We left nothing on the ground whatsoever.”
In 1941, the Angelina & Neches River was the oldest tram road in East Texas functioning as a common carrier. The Dunagan-Chireno stretch of almost twenty-two miles was abandoned in 1963. With the Angelina County Lumber sawmill shut down for the last time in December, 1966, the Angelina & Neches River's major client became Southland Paper Mill at Lufkin. Zlatkovich reported that in 1974 track amounted to 9.99 miles. The railroad still hauls tonnage for Champion-International, Southland's successor.
Keeling lists four geared and ten rod steam locomotives under Angelina County Lumber Company and thirty-one miles of track. For Angelina and Neches River R. R. he lists thirty miles of track.
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