HISTORY from ICC "Tap Lines Case" in 1912:
The
Kimball Lumber & Manufacturing Company is unincorporated and is owned
largely, if not entirely, by Mr. Phin Kimball. The tap line of the company
is incorporated as the Arkansas & Gulf Railway. It extends from Kimball,
in the state of Arkansas, across the state line to Laark, in the state of
Louisiana, a distance of seven miles. Kim-ball is not a town and is now even
without a station, one built by the Iron Mountain having been destroyed by
fire. It is simply a point of interchange between the tap line and the Iron
Mountain. Laark is a company town owned by Mr. Kimball. There is a post
office and Mr. Kimball is the postmaster. There are about three miles of
logging spurs extending into the 35,000 or 40,000 acres. of timber there
owned by Mr. Kimball. The tap line was incorporated in 1905, but no capital
stock has been issued. It has a bookkeeper, timekeeper, an agent at Laark,
" and a lady accountant at St. Louis." There are no stations or
station buildings, and the agent at Laark is also in the company's store at
Laark owned by Mr. Kimball. Upon inquiry it appears that Mr. Kimball
understood that he owned the tap line, but that he "has a few local
partners who own between $300 and $460 in the investment." Automatic
couplers are not used on the logging cars, because the road is so rough they
will not stay coupled. Passengers are carried between Kimball and Laark upon
a motor car; it also takes the mail. There are no passenger tickets, fares
being collected in cash. This traffic does not seem to be covered by a
lawful tariff, although as the trap line crosses the boundary line between
the two states it is necessarily interstate traffic. There is no development
in the surrounding country, such farms as formerly existed there having been
abandoned, and there is no traffic to speak of except that of the lumber
company. The present source of the outside traffic of the tap line is thus
described by Mr. Kimball in a letter filed in lieu of a brief:
I
have designated by writing the word "Ranch " on the map where
residents live, which you will note are six-this is all-and these six will
not average 25 acres each, and doubt if 15 acres each of cultivated lands.
They have hogs and cattle that run " wild " in the forest, free of
cost, and that is the cause of the " clearings " at those points.
The
mill is at Laark, and the tap line enters a charge of $1.50 per car for
hauling the logs from the several spurs to the mill. During the year 1909 it
hauled 3,000,000 feet of logs from the forests near Kimball. For hauling the
manufactured lumber back from Laark to Kimball the Iron Mountain allows the
tap line from 2 to 3 cents a hundred pounds, but as the rate on lumber. from
Laark is 1 cent higher than the rate from Kimball the net amount accruing to
the tap line is 1 and 2 cents. Although Mr. Kimball is president and traffic
manager of the tap line, he receives no salary from it, but does enjoy free
transportation over the trunk lines, and uses passes when traveling on the
business of his lumber company.
A
reading of the testimony of this witness does not give an adequate
impression of the humor with which he offered it, or the amusement with
which it was heard by those present. Rudimentary as was his effort to give a
legal form and appearance to the separation of the tap line from his lumber
company, his case does not differ substantially in that respect from many
other instances on the record. Many of the Arkansas tap lines are chartered
with the health resort known as Hot Springs as a terminus, but none had
reached that point at the date of the hearing, nor was any prospect shown by
any tap line of such a fulfillment at any time in the future of its charter
powers. Mr. Kimball, in a letter addressed to the Commission after the
hearing, explains the future prospects of his railroad in this wise:
As
I have before stated, The Arkansas & Gulf Railroad is going to be built
somewhere—either south, east, or northwest, or likely both. It was started
with that full intention, and was stopped because railroad building was
stopped in that section generally, and it now needs help, more than ever,
and not a "knock." Please help me boost it.
While
this seems somewhat indefinite it is in fact no less definite than are the
plans for future extensions put forth by many others.
The
Arkansas & Gulf tap line differs from the great majority in that the
mill was not built on the tracks of the trunk line but 7 miles away in the
forest, and the manufactured lumber is therefore hauled by the tap line for
that distance. Mr. Kimball explains the location of the mill by saying that
while it is a costly enterprise to build a manufacturing plant in the woods
away from the main line and he could have saved thousands of dollars by
building it on the tracks of the Iron Mountain, he always thought the
railroad " was the best part of the proposition."
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