The Old Rails Will Tell No Tales
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John Nelson graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York in 1965 and enjoyed a long career at sea on commercial and military support ships. After retiring from his seagoing career, he continued working in various capacities in the maritime industry until a final retirement in 2012. Since then he has been active in researching local history and restoring and operating steam engines and antique mills.
He lives in neighboring Panola County and is a long-time member of the Yalobusha Historical Society. He writes about his experiences in the Panolian, Oxford Eagle and Herald. He is also the uncle of Herald publisher David Howell.
Some recent land clearing south of Highway 6 across from Heafner Motors in Batesville gave passing motorists a better view of a section of raised roadbed of the old Batesville & Southwestern Railroad, most commonly known as “The Dummyline.”
The work also turned up a few pieces of bent and pitted rail sections that had somehow escaped being collected when the rail was taken up in the mid 1930s. Some friends got them transported out to my farm where I intend to give them a new life on my Chapletown & Asa Railroad.
Over the past weeks, a considerable number of hours have been spent straightening the rails, chipping off years of scale buildup, and using angle grinders to get the 30-ft sections smooth enough that they won’t wear away the wheels of my two little, narrow-gauge engines.
Working on them made me think about the stories they could tell if they could talk. For numerous passengers and tens of thousands of hardwood logs from the virgin forests that once covered the river bottoms in Panola and Quitman counties have rolled over them. It might have been a mere 17 miles long and only lasted about 20 years, but the railroad left a lasting imprint on the history and folklore of southern Panola County.
The railroad was a joint project undertaken by R.J. Darnell, Inc. and the Illinois Central Railroad. Darnell needed the railroad to get logs to Batesville, and the Illinois Central benefited from the freight charges to haul them to the Darnell Sawmill in Memphis. After the mill in Memphis burned and was rebuilt in Batesville, the Illinois Central still profited by hauling away the finished lumber products.
The train to Crowder began on the bed still visible behind the Cotton Warehouse (the old Compress) and consisted of an engine pulling a string of empty log cars with a passenger coach and a baggage car attached to the rear. The train was supposed to depart Batesville at 11 a.m. and begin the return trip from Crowder at 1 p.m., but since it was primarily operated for the benefit of the mill and loggers along the route and not for passengers, it was seldom on schedule.
The first regular stop was where the railroad crossed what is now McDowell Road. The stop was to be called McDowell until Miss Bessie Cole McDowell sued the line over what she considered insufficient payments for the right-of-way and a drainage problem that she claimed was caused by the road bed. The railroad then changed the name to Roberson after Jake Roberson whose land was a little further south.
When one turns off Highway 6 onto Crowder Road, passes the old Jarret Faulkner house on the left, and then rounds the curve and heads southwest, the bed of the old railroad will start to appear on the left of the road. And as one proceeds up a slight rise before reaching Scot Road, the railroad cut is plainly visible on the left. From there on, the present road pretty much follows the old railroad bed to Crowder.
It was around present day Scot Road where my daddy as a young boy would sometimes sneak down from our farm up on the bluff and soap the rails and then hide and watch the locomotive’s driving wheels spin. After a few such pranks, the engineer and fireman were prepared at that spot to sand the rails.
From there, it was a short run down to Asa where Asa Tucker had a farming operation and a commissary. Freight was unloaded there for the community, and more freight and empty log cars were dropped off at logging camps that were beginning to appear along the route.
From Asa, the railroad passed over a rough stretch of fill dirt that was often washed out by nearby Asa Creek before arriving at Stone’s Stop where freight and empty cars were left for logging camps, and supplies were dropped off for General James Stone’s hunting camp.
Stone’’s Stop would give our little railroad a place in literary history since William Faulkner was a regular there for years. At Stone’s there was a lot of drinking and card playing and enough hunting to give Faulkner the background to write “The Bear,” one of the seven stories that make up the book “Go Down Moses.” That story even mentions a logging train that took hunters to the fictional camp of Major de Spain.
The next stop was Mims, and from there the train rounded a curve and headed due south passing through Sutton before rolling into Crowder where it was turned around on the wye. Considerable time was spent in Crowder discharging and loading passengers and freight and switching log cars before starting the return run to Batesville.
I got a little surprise when underneath the scale the date 1882 appeared as the year the rails were manufactured – almost 30 years before the first rail was laid on the Batesville & Southwestern. The rail had been supplied by Illinois Central and had evidently been used before in another location. I would love to know their earlier history, but these rails ain’t talking.
They’ve been around for over a 140 years, but the rails are not finished making history. The six usable lengths I have will extend my railroad 90 feet, and passengers ranging from those showing up to see a little German locomotive that saw service in WWI to children coming here to ride Christmas trains will roll over them.
But if the history of their service here is to be preserved, someone will have to record it since these rails tell no tales.
