| History: | The history of the Waterman Lumber Company tapline, the Texas & Gulf Railway Company, began with the incorporation of the Longview & Sabine Valley Railway Company, chartered in January 1877, with the intent to build a line to the gulf. The line was built as far as Camden in Harrison County, a total of eleven miles by 1878. Its railroad and property were deeded, on August 2, 1886, to the Galveston Sabine & St Louis Railway Company, at Longview, which had been chartered earlier in December 1882. During 1884 and 1885, the GS&SL had built eleven miles of narrow-gauge road from Camden to Martin's Creek, with an intent to build a line from Grayson County to Galveston through Shelby County. Through a series of legal maneuvers and the expansion to a standard gauge of the stretch from Camden to Martin's Creek, the Galveston Sabine & St Louis was transferred, with its railroad and property, to the Texas Sabine Valley & Northwestern on June 22, 1888. Earlier chartered in 1887, the TSV&NW had even earlier built a standard-gauge railroad from Martin's Creek to Carthage in 1885. Thus, in June 1885, TSV&NW owned thirty-seven miles of track from Longview to Carthage. Two other railroads, the Texas & Sabine Valley Railway Company and the Marshall Timpson & Sabine Pass Railroad Company, had completed 2.2 miles from Carthage to Boren and nineteen miles from Carthage to Timpson, respectively. They both went into receivership.
With the Texas legislative urging a consolidation of the holdings of the Texas Sabine Valley & Northwestern, the Texas & Sabine Valley Railway, and the Marshall Timpson & Sabine Pass, the Texas & Gulf Railway Company, the Waterman Lumber Company logging industrial, acquired the three lines on December 27, 1904. It completed more than twelve miles from the Waterman Lumber mill at Timpson to another Waterman site at Waterman in 1906, both in Shelby County. In 1910, it constructed twenty-one miles from Gary, in Panola County, to Center, in Shelby County. Thus, the Texas & Gulf shortline of some ninety-five miles linked Waterman with parts of Panola, Shelby, and Harrison, and Gregg counties, with the rest of the state, and, therefore, the nation. Texas & Gulf leased a portion of the line to the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe, which had built by 1904 to Center, in Shelby County. Texas & Gulf abandoned a twenty-seven mile stretch in 1933 because of timber depletion and the intrusion of trucking, which hurt the shortline's probability. The operating remainder of the line became a part of the Gulf, Colorado, & Santa Fe in 1948.
The Texas & Gulf was significant to the development of Highway 43 from Longview to Carthage, interior roads from Carthage to Timpson in the counties of Panola and Shelby, and Highway 59 and 96 from the area of Gary to Carthage. |