| History: | According to Reed, the Texas & Northeastern Railway Company was chartered on January 29, 1900, with headquarters at Village Mills, in Hardin County, on the Texas & New Orleans. The charter was dropped the following year. Zlatkovich records that the road ran five miles from Village Mills to Wick. The only major industry at Village Mills since 1882 had been the Village Mills Company, a subsidiary of Texas Tram & Lumber Company, one of several Long Manufacturing Company interests. Village Mills was sold to Kirby Lumber Company in either 1901 or 1902, the lumber plant being redesignated as Mill L in the Kirby chain of mills. Kirby Lumber operated the mill until about 1935.
The Long Manufacturing Company with its connections to Beaumont Lumber, Texas Tram & Lumber, Village Mills, and other lumber businesses, had been involved in tramming the East Texas pineries for more than twenty years by 1900. Texas & Northeastern, then, was most likely a Village Mills Company incorporated and chartered railroad that had grown from one of its several logging tram operations. The possibility does remain, however, considering the short time of the charter and the short length of the railroad, that T&NE may have been an independent operation.
The Village Mills Company (W. A. Fletcher, E. A. Fletcher, J. F. Keith) was a subsidiary of Texas Tram and Lumber Company (W. A. Fletcher). Both organizations grew out of the firm, Long and Company of Beaumont. By the time the mill at Village, Hardin County, was built in 1882, W.A. Fletcher was the majority stockholder of both companies, Village Mills Company and Texas Tram and Lumber Company. Jehu Frank Keith was vice-president and superintendent of these firms. The Long and Company of Beaumont also was involved. The sawmill was constructed about a mile north of the town of Village at a point called Long Station. The mill was very successful, receiving mostly crosstie orders, and was able to record several “cutting records” for a sawmill of its size. The Village plant had always had a reputation as a high production operation. PO BOX 6109
W. A. Fletcher invented, then patented, his steam log skidder, in 1895, that changed East Texas logging forever. The skidder, on four wheels, rested above the logging car it would load. Up to 1,200 feet of cables stretched into the forest. The cable would be secured to a log, and then the skidder would reel in the cable. Next, the skidder's crane would lift and place the log on the car. The Village Mills tramming operations, under Fletcher and Keith, before 1901, consisted of at least twenty-one miles of road, four locomotives, and sixty logging cars, rolling through more than 100,000 acres of company-owned stumpage.
All Beaumont Lumber Company mills did their own logging as well as being supplied by the Beaumont Lumber subsidiary tram companies. Villages Mills, about ten miles north of Kountze, in Hardin County, was the headquarters for the tram logging operation there. The newly formed Kirby Lumber Company acquired the facility on January 1, 1902 and quickly constructed tram connections to Silsbee by 1904. Most Kirby mills did the same. In 1906, the Kirby Lumber tram road at Village Mills was a narrow gauge twenty miles railroad with two locomotives. In 1928, the Kirby mill at Village Mills still operated six miles of logging tram.
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