A Brief History of the Railroad

The Mobile & Bay Shore RR made its first complete run from the M&O station (Union Station) in Mobile, Alabama, to the station in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, on September 10, 1899. An interesting aside was the way Bayou La Batre was named 'Portersville' at the time. This 'First Excursion' was sponsored by the Young Men's Benevolent Association [A predecessor of the YMCA], and it was later reported that there were some two thousand people who rode the trains that day. A clipping from the Mobile Press announcing the upcoming event included the following notices:

The clipping contained an additional advertisement just beneath the excursion notice which read:

A 'test run' through Coden took place nine days before the official run, with only the bridge across Coden Bayou needing to be completed.

Bay Shore Avenue in Crichton, on the north side of Springhill Avenue, existed at the same time as the railroad, although not in the same form as it does today, and was not so named until after the railroad's abandonment. There were actually two roads, Porter's Lane and Stein Street, that paralleled the ROW on either side up to about Mill Street.

At the southern-most end of Bay Shore Avenue, looking south, the track splits down the middle what is now the parking lot of UMS-Wright School. The school is just north of Tacon Station.

Trains arriving in Bayou La Batre would first pull through the 'Y' at San Souci Beach just south of Bayou La Batre, and then back into the station tracks. This was to allow the train to pull out of the station on the return trip heading in the correct direction.

Delchamps Station sat in the middle of the junction leading off to Cedar Point. The station was built on a wedge-shaped platform that sat between the two North legs of the 'Y'.

The general outline of the building was identical to both the Theodore and Bayou la Batre stations, but with an added bay window on the opposite side for traffic on the Alabama Port branch.

The track conditions of the M&O and M&BS may have been similar to the standards of the GM&N, a contemporary and future partner in the merger to become the GM&O. Specifications for the GM&N (itself a descendant of the MJ&KC) in 1899-1910 were:

The weight of the rail is measured by the yard [3 linear feet]. 70 Lb-per-yard rail, used during the late 1800's and early 1900's as mainline rail, is today considered very light, adequate mostly for industrial spurs where the number of cars and switching operations are few. For perspective, a 39' length of 70 lb. rail would weigh 910 pounds. The same length of 60 lb. rail would weigh 780 pounds. Rails used during and before the Civil War may have been lighter than 40 pounds per yard, and this tends to indicate the use of strap rail, which is not rail as we think of it today, but simple strips of steel, perhaps no more than 2 inches wide, attached to the tops of wooden sleepers, which were spiked or nailed to the cross ties. This type of rail dates back to the earliest days of railroading in the US, and contributed to many accidents, some fatal.

To demonstrate how light these early rails were, during the Civil War when Sherman marched to Atlanta, part of his mission was to disrupt and destroy all of the railroad equipment available in the South, and the way they accomplished this led to the coining of a phrase, alternately known as Sherman's Hairpins, or Sherman's Neckties, depending perhaps on which side of the Mason-Dixon line one comes from. After removing the rails from the ties, Sherman's men would pile the ties and ignite them, then put the rails into the hot fire. When the rails began glowing a dull to bright red, his men would lift the rails either with gloved hands or rail grabs, and then quickly locate a telegraph pole where they wrapped them completely around. This made the rails totally useless.

According to the book "Alabama Railroads" by Wayne Cline, this was described as a 'trademark Yankee procedure', and may not have been introduced originally by Sherman's troops. History attributes the method to him, however, and thus the above noted phrase came about. The cross ties were laden with pine pitch, which was highly flammable, and this made the fires burn much hotter. In turn, this made the iron rails soft and easier to bend. The repeated heating process also weakened their strength, making them unsuitable for supporting the weight of a train. In addition to telegraph poles, trees were often pressed into service to receive the twisted rails.

Mainline rails of modern trackage is generally [estimated to be] in the 110 - 130 Lb-per-yard range. The Pennsylvania RR [later Penn-Central, CONRAIL, and now divided between CSX and the Norfolk Southern] at one time used the heaviest rail in operation at nearly 150 Lb-per-yard on their four-track mainline around Horseshoe Curve.

On the GM&N, no mention was made concerning tie plates or other anchoring devices. Assuming rails 39' in length, add to this 540 track joiners per mile, single track. If no tie plates were used, and assuming four spikes per tie, two each rail, we can also add 12,800 spikes per mile, if every tie received spikes.

Portions of the GM&N trackage were said to be in varying states of ballasted and earthen, meaning some areas of trackage were constructed using ballast for stability and drainage, and some were constructed using the older method of laying ties directly on the ground and either leaving them exposed, or filling the area between the ties with packed dirt. Apparently this method was copied for much of the M&BS on its lower sections during most of its life. Photos of Rolston do not show any ballast, just packed earth. Other areas on the Cedar Point branch were reported to submerge into the swamps when the trains passed after a heavy rain.

This method of track laying would also appear to be common to all three of the transcontinental railways being built in the same general time period: The US Transcontinental, the Canadian Transcontinental, and the Russian Trans-Siberian Railroad which was nearly as long as both North American ventures combined -- between 6000 and 7000 miles.

Jett Brothers' Construction Company, or Jett's Brick Yard, is said to have supplied as much as 50% of the bricks used in Mobile around the turn of the century. This M&BS customer had four huge kilns, 25' wide and 75' long, for baking the bricks. The M&BS serviced the yard from a spur built on the west side of the main, using a single switch to the south. The spur tracks were built right against the faces of the kilns for ease of loading onto the cars.

The sequence for servicing Jett's appears to be as follows:

The Coden station was a two-story building on the north side of the tracks, facing Coden Bayou on the east side. To date, this and the station at Mann Junction are the only stations on the M&BS which are known to have been of multiple floor construction.

Both Coden and Mann were built to identical floor plans, but the exterior styles were different.

The flag stop at Rolston did have a covered pavilion similar to the ones found at Parkers, Kennedy, and San Souci, for passengers to take shelter beneath while waiting for trains. It was located about one half mile from the Rolston Hotel, said to be the largest of the hotels on Portersville Bay.

Fowl River station was the renovated Prosser station, enlarged to provide greater freight service to local agricultural producers. The station, and its associated water tower, were both constructed on the north side of Fowl River Road, and on the west side of the tracks. The water tower serviced trains in both directions.

The owners of the Tiny Diny have an especially fond memory of the railroad. During the GM&O years, railroad crews would park their locomotives behind the restaurant and go inside to eat. This was when the building was truly a 'tiny' diner, and on the opposite side of Holcombe Avenue from where it sits today. The present building sits on land which the restaurant purchased from the railroad after the final abandonment of the Farnell spur. The parking lot covers some of the original roadbed.

A timetable for the M&O Railroad, dated March 10, 1940, continued to list the Bay Shore District as active from the Government Street station, which was now the beginning of the line, southward to Bayou La Batre, but only for freight service. The double trackage between Tacon and Government Street had been eliminated by this date, and from this it can be surmised the M&O was under the full control of the GM&N prior to the merger which formed the GM&O. Tacon had by this date been removed from the timetables as a stop on the M&O, and if it had been used by the GM&N at any time, it had been removed from their timetables as early as 1938. Although the stops from Neely to Crichton may have still been operational, the tracks between Tacon and Crichton may have been removed, and trains of the Bay Shore Branch would have been using the GM&N trackage which still remains in service today.

Apparently, the service to Bayou La Batre was intermittent at best, certainly not the daily event it once was, as there were no fixed times posted for any of the remaining stops.

Only five stops are mentioned in the list:

The station at Prichard remained on the M&O timetable as a passenger stop for the Gulf Coast Special, identified as trains 15 [Southbound] and 16 [Northbound], which ran between Mobile, AL and St. Louis, MO daily. It was also serviced by Gas-Electric daily trains 5 [Southbound] and 6 [Northbound] between Mobile and Meridian, MS.