A Mighty Midget

The information about the locomotive on the front of this post card was taken from this website: http://hawkinsrails.net/industrials/lclc/lclc.htm About 1920, a small 2-6-0 was sold to the Williams Lumber Co. at Ponchatoula, Louisiana, and sold again in May 1921 to the Joseph Rathborne Lumber Co. Rathbone closed in 1929 and was sold to the Joyce interests of Chicago. The Joyce family also operated rail lines at Rainey River, Minnesota and Manistique, Michigan. The Ponchatoula mill was reopened on July 15, 1936 as the Louisiana Cypress Lumber Co.

The little 2-6-0 was renumbered to #2 and served as backup to the company's road locomotive #1, a 2-6-2 built by Porter in 1921. For about a year before the mill closed in January 1956, Cypress imported mahogany logs from Honduras to cut up at the Ponchatoula mill. The logs were shipped to New Orleans by steamship and then transported to Ponchatoula in Illinois Central gondolas. #2 was used in regular service as the switcher at the mill to switch the gondolas while #1 was out on the road. This map shows where in Louisiana the locomotive did its work.