Crown Zellerbach Corporation

To supply the huge amounts of pulpwood required by the growing Bogalusa Paper operation, the [Gaylord Container Company] started acquiring its own fleet of pulpwood cars in the 1920's. The fleet had grown to 309 "woodracks" by 1947, and the last additions were ten fifty-foot steel cars bought new in March of 1969. To expedite the shipment of pulpwood from the west, Gaylord purchased twenty miles of track between Hammond and Covington, La., on July 31, 1941, for $45,000. The line was Illinois Central's old Baton Rouge, Hammond & Eastern branch which had been built in 1908 and abandoned on March 1, 1934. For a few years after abandonment, the line was leased by the Natalbany Lumber Co. which ran pulpwood trains to Bogalusa from its operations just north of Hammond. The regular locomotives on this run, incidentally, were Natalbany Lbr. Nos. 101 and 201, an almost matched pair of Alco 2-8-2's. The 201 would later operate on the Denkmann Lumber Co. log train from Canton, Miss., to Florenville, La.

Louis Saillard, The Pulpwood Train

The original wooden caboose, not numbered but identified as caboose "A" was reportedly a former GM&N car. It was replaced in the 1950's by caboose "B" another wooden car purchased from a used railroad equipment dealer. For awhile in the 1960's the operation boomed while Crown Zellerbach attemped to salvage large amounts of timber west of Hammond which had been damaged by a hurricane. During this time the train ran six days a week. A GM&O RS-2 appeared on the train for a short time in the summer of 1966 while one of the Alcos was ailing, but generally through the years one unit ran to Hammond on the wood train while the other switched the Bogalusa papermill. The ten man section gang continued to maintain the 80-lb rail and bridges and Alco No. 303 ran to Hammond as late as June of 1970 to deliver a few cars to the ICRR, returning with only the caboose.

Louis Saillard