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Missouri Southern Railroad

The Missouri Southern Railroad (MoSou) is a Class II railroad that can trace its roots all the way back to January of 1884. At the time Reynolds County, Missouri had no way of quickly transporting goods throughout its cities and towns, so a railroad was desperately needed.

History

While the name Missouri Southern can only be traced back to 1887, the original section of the Missouri Southern was named the Mill Spring, Current River & Barnesville Railroad Company (MSCR&B). The MSCR&B was founded in 1884 by five unnamed businessmen from Pennsylvania and Missouri who met at the small town of Colemanville in Carter County, Missouri in order to discuss the idea of a short line in the neighboring Reynolds County. These men planned to acquire a nearby narrow gauge railway which served the Clarkson Sawmill near Wayne County, Missouri community of Leeper and extend it in the northwestern direction into Reynolds County. In Leeper the MSCR&B would run beside the already established St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway (SLIM&S) giving the MSCR&B the ability to unload their freight straight onto the waiting SLIM&S consists.

The new railroad, which had been built in a hurry, was poorly constructed. Nearly thirty pound rail had been laid on an unballasted and poorly laid railbed. However, as the road was not expecting to use any large locomotives, this was perfectly fine. During the first decade of the railroads life, the name was changed from Mill Spring, Current River, & Barnesville Railroad Company to the more streamlined Missouri Southern Railroad so that it would appear better on the newspapers at the time. The Missouri Southern used the lone locomotive of the Clarkson Sawmill until 1889 when they obtained a 2-4-0 H.K. Porter steam locomotive named the Murrill Springs from the Hot Springs Railroad in Arkansas.

In the early 1890's when the railroad reached Ellington, Missouri, the MoSou bought several Shay locomotives for use on the industrial spurs around Carter County. Passenger service was only an after thought as the road focused more on freight in its early years, however it did have a single passenger car which would usually travel with the daily round trip freight from Leeper to Ellington. Later at somepoint in the late 19th century to the early 20th century the line made an expansion from Ellington to the growing town of Tralaloo, Missouri (later Reynolds), which would see irregular service until 1905 when a standard passenger service was created to go along the entire line.

By 1906 the MoSou could be considered your average Ozark short line designed to haul freight instead of people. In that year however, the railroad had it's first change of hands. The MoSou was sold to Chicago lumberman Frank D. Stout and a small group of Leeper businessmen which began the tedious process of converting the MoSou from a narrow gauge railroad to a standard gauge railroad with the help of imported Italian laborers. The aging thirty pound rail was switched out for seventy-five pound rail atop better roadbed, the rotting wooden bridge across Black River was replaced by a modern steel one, and many stations along the road were completely rebuilt.

Although a line extension to Salem, Missouri was planned, the MoSou only ever made it to the growing community of Bunker, Missouri. In 1907 a large sawmill was built in Bunker by the Bunker Lumber Company, which only fed the idea to stop building at Bunker. MoSou officials believed it would be more cost effective to bring lumber in from Bunker instead of continuing the next thirty miles to Salem. However, the overall idea of expanding even more wasen't put down until the 1930s.

On March 30th, 1907 the Ellington Press announced the first trial run of the standard gauge line stretching fifty miles from Leeper to Bunker. The passenger train was hauled by a seventy ton Alco-Rogers 4-4-0 passenger locomotive of the latest design, straight from the shops. Behind the locomotive was a combination of a smoker and baggage car followed by a day coach. Both had been upholstered and were heated by the steam generated by the locomotive. This event proved that the MoSou could be more then a "Average Ozark Lumber Railway".

In addition to the MoSou's mainline stretching from Leeper to Bunker, several spurs along the railroad had been created and or upgraded. These included the two and a half mile Lone Star Line and the two Industrial spurs built around the turn of the century. While the Lone Star Line was retired before the conversion to standard gauge, the two industrial spurs were used until the beginning of World War One as tram lines.

Prior to the start of World War One the MoSou had a healthy income rate. Shipping 110 cars between Bunker and Leeper every month in the years leading up to the Great War, the railroad was given a false sense of hope once the war did begin. Soon the United States Railroad Administration put limits on the amount of freight the MoSou could ship, drastically decreasing the railroads profit over the following four years. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, the MoSou kept its daily freight trains going, along with extra ones if it was requested. By the summer of 1924 the cost of steam power began chipping away at the railroads income and management could tell. In response, the MoSou created its own homebuilt motor car in order to bring profit up. Instead this backfired, as the motor cars engine would oftenly break down and was quite unreliable.

After dealing with this for weeks, the MoSou scrapped their motor car ordered an official one from the J. G. Brill Company for twenty two thousand dollars that was powered by gasoline instead of steam. The MoSou unintentially became the sixteenth railroad in America to buy a Brill Motorcar. The Ellington Press described the motorcar as being forty three feet in length and having several modern accomodations the average passenger train did not, including hot water and electrical lights. Residents along the line quite enjoyed the new addition to the railroad, giving it the nickname Bull Moose due to the loud bellow the horn made.

However, all was not perfect with the Bull Moose. Her profit was disappointing, at a average of nine dollars in mail and five to seven dollars in passenger fares. Eventually the MoSou tried to get the Missouri Pacific Railroad to stop one of its St. Louis - Little Rock trains at Leeper to accomodate the MoSou passengers there. However, the Missouri Pacific quickly declined this after seeing how small Leeper was and the minimal change in income MoSou freight traffic would have on the Missouri Pacific. The second idea the MoSou had to increase the shrinking Bull Moose profit was to sign a contract with the American Railway Express Company to offer express service on the railroad. This was plan was successful, but even then the income was still minimal.

Later in 1929 the MoSou decided to open bus lines to try and increase their profit even more. They ordered two seven-passenger Buicks and opened two lines, one going from Van Buren, Missouri to Centerville, Missouri, and then Glover, Missouri in order to connect with Missouri Pacific trains and busses. The second bus route went from Salem, to Bunker, Centerville and then Glover. This line proved disasterous however when the Great Depression hit, and was closed down in 1930. The left over Buick was converted from a bus into a rail inspection vehicle, which served on the MoSou until the very end.

In a final attempt to cut costs down, the MoSou ordered an oil-electric locomotive from the Plymouth Locomotive Works in 1934. The company got the fifty thousand dollar locomotive in 1935 and placed all of its steam locomotives on a stand-by basis. The MoSou management from the time the line converted from narrow gauge to standard had shown an aggressive and innovative spirit, which had been shown by then buying the Brill motorcar and Plymouth electric engine. But besides that, the line also worked hard to develope a agrigcultural department in 1920 and ecouraged the cultivation of apples and peaches, which eventually led to the developement of Fruit City, Missouri. The company even signed a contract in 1939 with the Ellington School District to transpot children to and from school on the Bull Moose.

However, even after all of its efforts, the MoSou was still loosing money throughout all of the 1930s. Profit only began to increase in 1939 when they made ten thousand dollars annually. Half of this profit was due to the near abandonment of any maintence work on the MoSou, which eventually accumulated to the railroads complete abandonment in April of 1941 under the orders of the I.C.C. and P.S.C. There was no formal opposition from shippers along the MoSou's line, with the only form of any opposition coming from the Ellington mayor at the time.

The last train on the MoSou occured on May 20th of 1941 when the Plymouth locomotive picked up the last boxcar for Leeper.

Locomotive List

#1, Alco-Rogers 4-4-0

#1, Plymouth Oil-Electric Locomotive

#2, Alco-Rogers 2-6-0

#2, H.K. Porter 2-4-0

#3, Alco-Rogers 2-6-0

#4, Lima Shay

#4, Terminal Railroad 2-6-0

M-100, Brill Motorcar

Remains

Not much remains of the Missouri Southern Railroad, however one major component that made it out of being scrapped is a boxcar that the MoSou used in the 1930s and 1940s. Currently it is being used as a storage unit on private property, so no one can get to it without permission.