History
The line was initially chartered as the Dardanelle & Russellville Railway, and train operations began in August 1883. After undergoing reorganization in 1900, operations continued as the Dardanelle & Russellville Railroad. When originally constructed, the railroad carried cotton and other agricultural products. The predominant traffic shifted to coal by 1900, thanks to extensive semi-anthracite coal production along the railroad. Coal production along the D&R ended in the mid-1950s when the last underground mines of McAlester Fuel Company were closed. At one time, the railroad owned the Dardanelle Pontoon Bridge and Turnpike Company, which operated a pontoon bridge (for wagons and later automobiles, not trains) across the Arkansas River at Dardanelle. The D&R was also a leader in the trend for railroads to branch into other transportation modes, owning a highway subsidiary from 1919-1960. The highway subsidiary, Dardanelle Transfer Company, operated both bus and truck service over an expanded territory much larger than was served by the railroad itself.
Read more about this topic: Dardanelle And Russellville Railroad
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)