| History: | The Gulf & Northern Railway Company, a subsidiary corporation of Wier Long Leaf Lumber Company, and chartered September 17, 1917, constructed a logging industrial and tram line from Wiergate in Newton County to the Orange & Northwestern tracks near Bleakwood, a distance of twenty miles. B. F. Bonner was the organizing force behind the movement. His purposes were twofold: one, to provide rail transportation for the milled lumber of Wier Long Leaf Lumber Company's mill at Wiergate; and two, to gain the freight rates of the Orange & Northwestern, then under control of the Frisco Lumber Company, which later came under control of the Missouri Pacific.
Between fifteen and seventeen miles of track were completed, from Wiergate to Newton, under the direction of Wiergate Lumber's president, R. W. Wier. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe advanced the money for the construction and held the Gulf's bonds at par in payment. The road operated as an entity separate from Wier Long Leaf Lumber Company. In 1940, the headquarters, however, was at Wiergate, with the officers being J. H. Keefe, President; J. H. Kirby, Vice President; H. M. Seaman, Vice President; W. T. Hancock, Vice President and Traffic Manager; George F. Howard, Secretary and Treasurer; and C. H. Rhoads, Auditor. It is obvious from the roles of Wier and Bonner, both Wier Long Leaf executives, and many of the others having connections with Kirby Lumber Corporation and the Lutcher and Stark lumber interests of Orange, that the railroad was for and on behalf of the interests of the Wier Long Leaf Lumber Company.
Tram operations in 1937, according to The Gulf Coast Lumberman, used three locomotives. Logs were hauled to the tram rails by a two-line steam skidder (an ecologically unsound system of timber harvesting), and a steam loader hauled them onto the log cars. A log "tripping" device at the mill pond could unload sixteen cars of longleaf pine logs in under twenty minutes. A picture of a steam log loader and a horse team working on a Wiergate tram operation can be found on the front page of “The Timber Went But Wiergate Stayed.” Strapac's work records that the Gulf and Northern Railroad, the common carrier tram road of the Wier Long Leaf Lumber Company, was incorporated in 1918 and operating by that March. It ran 14.6 miles from Wiergate to Newton. The Santa Fe controlled the road by 1919. The road was abandoned in 1943. At least four locomotives operated on the road. Keeling lists several geared and rod locomotives that operated on five miles of track. The lumber company completed its last manufacturing on December 25, 1942, when the timber had been cut out. Zlatkovich reports that the railway line was abandoned in 1944.
This logging road had significant impact on the future development of Texas Highway 87 from Burkeville to Newton.
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