Pulpwood and wood chip operations

[benjamintickell53]

Questions have been asked about pulpwood and wood chip operations in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. In an effort to keep historical information available in an easily retrievable format (i.e.- this discussion forum) the question is being posted here. In addition to a discussion of the cars involved (pulpwood flats and wood chip hoppers), this traffic involved several different types of facilities. Pulpwood yards were generally transload facilities where trucks brought pulpwood to an area for loading on railcars. Sawmills generated wood chips, and might also have a pulpwood yard nearby for the timber which was not appropriate for processing into lumber. Both pulpwood and wood chips moved to paper mills, where the wood products were used in the manufacture of various grades and types of paper. Some mills supplemented their supply of forest products with scrap paper, usually delivered in bundles in boxcars.

Much of this traffic has disappeared, as have many of the facilities which originated or received this traffic. If you have information about these operations, or photos of the facilities or cars, please share your information so that a more complete understanding of this traffic can be developed. The wood chip train from Mountain Pine to Pine Bluff was one such unique operation — were there others on the MoPac?

Bill Pollard

[peggyrothschild]

Bill
I’m getting much more information from the former sales director that handled IP on three different occasions during his career and have the car management guys involved who handled the car supply and car types. Plus the manager who ran our Shreveport offices when the Payou Pierre mill started up operations. I’m not going to add any additional information here and will prepare a larger article for The Eagle magazine so others can see this research.

Paper Mills on the Missouri Pacific – Circa 1977
International Paper had six paper mills on the Missouri Pacific located in the southeast part of the system. IP never allowed a mill to be served by one railroad and would (wisely) play one carrier against the other. Generally outbound carloads were close to 50/50 but if one carrier shared more of the operating expenses (ie., plant or yard switching) the carload percentage would shift to cover costs. Besides the production of various paper products a byproduct of paper manufacturing was turpentine which the mills shipped out in tank cars during the month. I don’t recall this being a high number of loads – perhaps 1 or 2 a month.

IP used shipper car orders (Car Service Rule 15) for ordering their empties for loading and would not use customer assigned cars from the railroad due to the cost. CSR 15 allowed them to contest demurrage bills due to ‘run around’ claims meaning the switch crew had placed a newly arrived empty railcar into their plant before a previous arrived railcar that had been on ‘constructive placement’ longer. Demurrage was always an ‘active’ subject between IP and Mopac. IP liked having a surplus of cars near so cars would flow back to the nearest classification yards in an agent pool and then be applied to a car order.

Pine Bluff, Arkansas
This mill was served jointly by the MP and SSW. Pine Bluff mill used wood chips and produced xxxx outbound paper products. The mill was switched by both railroads; the Mopac switching the mill on first shift and the Cotton Belt on second shift. Third was rotated between the roads on an as needed basis. To maintain the plant inventory a railroad clerk was assigned to work in the IP offices on site. In 1977 Mopac installed a dedicated railroad computer terminal in the IP traffic manager’s office for car tracing, billing and ordering empties cars which was one of the first in the railroad industry.

Bayou Pierre, Louisiana
The Bayou Pierre was the last mill built on the Mopac with its facility south of Shreveport, Louisiana. Missouri Pacific built a 4 mile lead track from their mainline into the plant. They crossed three bayous between the main and the mill. The station was named Bayou Pierre because that was the last, and largest bayou that they crossed before reaching the mill. The mill was served by the Mopac and KCS with Mopac responsible for the switching. The railroad hauled in wood chips for paper production but logs were brought in by truck. This mill also received inbound boxcars of scrap paper as a fibre source. The KCS would bring cars into a setout track and the Mopac would pull these empty cars and replace with outbound KCS loads. MP built a dedicated rail yard just outside the plant and the mill was served by a TSE that went on duty at Bayou Pierre.

Pineville (Alexandria) , La
Served by the MP and KCS. More information to follow..

South Texarkana, Texas
This mill was served jointly by the Mopac and KCS. Not much else I know as I think IP was trying to close this mill when they opened Bayou Pierre.

Natchez, La
Mopac served this mill via a railcar ferry we operated from Ferriday, La across the river. The Illinois Central also served this mill from the east side of the river. Due to high maintenance costs, the MoPac discontinued operation of the ferry and all traffic to/from the mill was via interchange with the IC.

Bastrop, Louisiana
The Bastrop mill was an older facility and still received round wood (logs) for paper production. It was served by the Mopac and ALM. Interesting the MP engine foreman was required to know what types of wood was in the serving yard as the plant would order either soft or hard wood during the shift. There was nothing on the waybills or switch list to denote this detail so it was up to the various foreman to have this unique knowledge by walking the yard and marking his own list.

Round wood loading
The round wood was loaded on special flatcars with bulkheads on either end. After the cars were loaded by the shipper and before a bill of lading could be tendered a railroad carman would inspect each load to ensure the logs were not outside railroad clearances and were loaded so the wood wouldn’t fall off the cars while in transit. Once the carman signed off the cars could be billed and moved to destination.

More to follow…in The Eagle.
Charlie

[bargetanika]

I am very interested in this discussion. My layout is in Louisiana / Arkansas and although will never be large enough to have a paper mill, will originate raw paper mill wood traffic to an interchange.

I have several questions.

1. Bastrop received “round wood.” Were these the short crosswise loaded sticks? Or full car length logs?

2. Pine Bluff used wood chips. Was this a modern manifestation? Were regular pulpwood logs used earlier?

3. Is there some date when wood chips began to be transported to the mills ? Have wood chips replaced pulpwood logs as a preferred paper mill raw material? I must have at least 50 regular hoppers and would like to use them for wood chip traffic.

4. Where do wood chips come from? Just sawing wood in a sawmill can’t produce enough chips in quantity, right? Maybe a seperate chipping plant of some kind? If so. that would be a great freight origination point.

Obviously I don’t know much about this industry. Any help is appreciated.

[peggyrothschild]

Pat
Good questions, the pulp wood was loaded cross wise to the cars. The trucks coming into the plants carried the long logs that were over the length of the trailer.

As I get more into the research with the Mopac guys I worked with I’m being told all the mills got a mix of round wood and chips. There were plants that just produced wood chips for the mills.

I’m up to a two page article for the Eagle and just started and still need input from the car management guys on the types of cars used. So hopefully this will turn out to be a good addition to a future magazine article you can look forward to.

[mopac]

I only worked vacation relief at some point for Bob Fink who was the master of equipment for the wood train. Someone mentioned it came out of Mountain Pine, but as I recall it originated at Hope, but I am probably wrong. The train picked up wood racks in the 724000 series and wood chip hoppers at various stations and went around the hump at NLRK. I believe it went through Union Station. It did carry Pine Bluff and Bastrop cars, but may have terminated At PBLF and passed the Bastrops to a local, but again not clear, been too long ago.
Every once in awhile the wood cutters would cheat a little too much and one night a wood rack knocked the locomotive mirror off Amtrak #21 heading in the opposite direction on the double track. Much ado about that! Lots of tape measuring for several weeks.
There was a wood chip loader at Corning AR served by a local but they would frequently get to the point where their hopper would get full and begin phoning everyone in the book for an empty immediately. This usually resulted in a through freight out of NLRK being set up with a chip hopper behind the power to set out at Corning. Happened on a semi regular basis.
I am sure someone more knowledgeable can add to or correct.

Warren Wilson

[Author]

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