Washington and Choctaw Railway
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Washington and Choctaw Railway was a railroad company in southwestern Alabama, first based in Yellow Pine and later in Aquilla. Its main line ran from Yellow Pine through Aquilla to the Bolinger Station just north of Silas, with a length of about 31 miles. However, the line was in operation in its full length only from November 1916 to September 1919.
History
In the early 20th century, a narrow gauge logging railroad was operated from Yellow Pine about three miles north. It connected to the main line of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad in Yellow Pine. In April 1904, the E. W. Gates Lumber Company was founded and they acquired the logging railroad and a sawmill at Yellow Pine. The new owner rebuilt the railroad to standard gauge and worked on northward extensions. The railroad was operated under the name Washington and Choctaw Railway, named for the two counties (Washington County and Choctaw County) it connected. The name became official on December 13, 1910, when the railroad company was formally incorporated. By December 1909, the trackage had already reached Red Creek, with a branch to Millry, where the line connected to the Tombigbee Valley Railroad, about 28.7 miles in total length.
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This entry incorporates text from “Washington and Choctaw Railway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.