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THE
ANGELINA AND NECHES RIVER RAILROAD
An East Texas Short Line Railroad by
John Troesser Book
Your Hotel Here & Save: Lufkin
Hotels |
| | Most
of the Angelina and Neches River Railroad
TE Photo, October 2001 |
| | A
switching locomotive of the A & NR RR
TE Photo, October 2001 |
| The
A & NR Railroad celebrated it's centennial in 2000. It still shuttles between
industries in Lufkin and the
Union Pacific main line. A mural depicting the history of the railroad
can be found (appropriately) at the railroad tracks - just west of downtown Lufkin.
The Angelina and Neches River Railroad Company was chartered in August
1900.
It connected Keltys (which is now a part of Lufkin)
with Manton, a town eight miles east. There were plans to establish peach
orchards on cut over timberland in Manton, but these plans literally failed to
bear fruit. |
| | The
Angelina County Lumber Company
as portrayed on a mural by Lance Hunter
Downtown Lufkin
TE Photo, October 2001 |
As
early as 1895 the railroad was being used by the Angelina County Lumber Company
as a narrow gauge line. In 1906, after adding some 20 miles of track, it was converted
to standard gauge.
By 1912 the railroad had extended to Chireno
in Nacogdoches County.
In 1916 the railroad owned one locomotive and
five cars. They earned $6,000 that year on passenger traffic while the income
from freight exceeded $40,000. In 1963 21 miles of track between Dunagan and Chireno
was torn up.
In 1972, it owned two locomotives and eleven pieces of
rolling stock.
© John Troesser
January 2002 |
Angelina and Neches
River RailroadAn
Unlikely Partnership by Bob Bowman
They were an unlikely
business partnership--a German immigrant, an Irish storekeeper, and two Jewish
brothers.
But in 1900, Joseph Kurth, Simon W. Henderson, and Sam and Eli
Wiener pooled their resources and created the Angelina and Neches River Railroad.
It wasn’t much of a railroad in the beginning--two wood-burning narrow-gauge
locomotives and ten miles of track.
But in almost 110 years, the A&NR
has become as much a part of East Texas as the pine trees that blanket the region....
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