Bonhomie & Hattiesburg Southern Railway

In 1923 W.S.F. Tatum, owner of the Tatum Lumber Company of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, established the Bonhomie & Hattiesburg Southern Railway Company in order to purchase the Hattiesburg Branch from the Gulf, Mobile, & Ohio Railway. This twenty-seven mile branch connected Hattiesburg to the GM&O main line at Beaumont, Mississippi. Using the Hattiesburg Branch Tatum would be able to gain access to a new logging operation near Denco, Mississippi and transport lumber from Bonhomie, Mississippi, where Tatum owned a sawmill, to the GM&O junction at Beaumont where there was a connection to Mobile, Alabama.

The Interstate Commerce Commission approved the sale on January 5, 1925, and the Bonhomie & Hattiesburg Southern Railway went into operation on January 17, 1925. The entire capital stock of $335,000 was sold to the Tatum family, and all equipment for the railroad was leased from the Tatum Lumber Company including five locomotives, three of which were new Baldwin locomotives. The B&HS showed a profit for several years, but slipped into financial deficit as its profit from lumber traffic declined. Tatum's logging operation near Denco ended when the GM&O abandoned its Blodgett Branch, a dummy line from Denco to Piave, Mississippi. In 1953 Tatum sold the then unprofitable B&HS to the Fernwood, Columbia, & Gulf Railway.