History
The MCSA was chartered in June 1898 to build a line from Moscow to San Augustine, Texas by way of Camden, primarily to move products from a new W.T. Carter & Brother Lumber Company sawmill in Camden to the Houston East & West Texas Railway main line in Moscow. The lumber company’s owners provided the financing and owned most of the new railroad’s stock. The line from Moscow to Camden was completed on November 19, 1898 and was never extended to San Augustine.
At Camden, the MCSA connected to an extensive network of private W.T. Carter Company rail lines that were used to transport freshly cut timber from remote logging camps to the sawmill. Starting in the 1940s, these rail lines were gradually phased out as the lumber company made increasing use of trucks for timber extraction. Since the lumber company owned both rail operations, this process made plenty of surplus W.T. Carter steam locomotives available for use by the MCSA, delaying the onset of dieselization. The MCSA would not obtain its first diesel-electric locomotive until 1960 and still used steam power until 1965, one of the last common-carrier railroads in Texas to do so.
In 1968, the W.T. Carter & Bro. Lumber Company and the MCSA were purchased by Champion International. In 2000, both companies were acquired by International Paper. Georgia Pacific accuired all assets from International Paper (Mill and Railroad) in April 2007 and is the current owner.
Read more about this topic: Moscow, Camden And San Augustine Railroad
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“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)