Blacklands Railroad summary
The Blacklands Railroad (BLR) is a Class III short line railroad that operates in northeast Texas. It’s owned by Public Works Incorporated, an infrastructure investment firm. With headquarters out of Sulphur Springs, the railroad operates 8 miles of former Cotton Belt standard-gauge track between Mount Pleasant and Winfield.
History
The line of the now Blackland Railroad was originally part of the narrow-gauge Texas & St. Louis Railway Company of Texas from Texarkana to Mount Pleasant in 1881. By 1891, the railroad was reorganized from multiple foreclosures into the St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company, nicknamed the Cotton Belt. The line had been converted to standard gauge and extended west of Mount Pleasant to Ft. Worth by the way of Sulphur Springs. Intermodal freight was a daily occurrence on the line until May 1990 when the Cotton Belt’s parent company, the Southern Pacific Railroad permanently rerouted all traffic in the wake of a washout near Wylie. Abandonment west of Mount Pleasant to Plano took place shortly afterwards.
With intentions toward preserving rail service on the line, the counties of Hunt, Hopkins, Franklin, and Titus formed the Northeast Texas Rural Rail Transportation District. The 31-mile section between Greenville and Sulphur Springs was purchased on November 9, 1995, and the East Texas Central Railroad Company was contracted to operate the line in April 1996. The contract was passed over to Wayne Defebaugh who took over operations on May 1, 1999, under the newly formed Blacklands Railroad. The name serves as a tribute to the black gumbo soil common in the region. In 2010, the BLR expanded to operate a second freight railroad, the Henderson Overton Branch. Public Werks acquired both short lines in 2021.
Operations
The Blacklands Railroad is centrally located along the Interstate 30 corridor between Dallas, Tyler, Longview, and Texarkana. On-demand switching day and night is the railroad’s main service for its customers. The BLR diversified into the transloading business in 2014 by forming the subsidiary Black Gold Terminals. A transload terminal on the BLR is in Winfield to handle lumber, resin, chemicals, steel, and sand. Other services along the line include railcar storage and maintenance.
The Blacklands Railroad’s roster includes a variety of secondhand EMD diesel locomotives that are either owned by the railroad or leased. The motive power uses the railroad’s locomotive shop in Longview for repairs and maintenance. Contract work at the facility is also provided under Blacklands Locomotive Services
Interchange is made with the Union Pacific Railroad in Mount Pleasant.
Read more about the Blacklands Railroad in Trains’ June 2014 issue.
