"Tap Line Case" Summary of Jefferson & Northwestern Railway  
     
  Abstracted from "Tap Line Case", published in Decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission, 23 I.C.C. 277, 23 I.C.C. 549, and in Decisions of the United States Supreme Court, 234 U.S. 1.  
 
 
 
     
 

JEFFERSON & NORTHWESTERN RAILWAY. The Jefferson & Northwestern Railway Company was incorporated in 1899, and its capital stock, amounting to $20,000, is owned by the stockholders of the Clark & Boyce Lumber Company, which also holds its notes in the sum of $60,000. The tap line was built by Clark & Boyce as long ago as 1892 for the purpose of bringing logs to the mill, which is at a point known as North Jefferson, Tex., less than a quarter of a mile from the line of the Texas & Pacific and about a mile from the line of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas. The tap line has about 32 miles of track connecting with these railroads and serving the mill and timber. There are also two or three small mills along the line that formerly manufactured lumber, but none of them had been in operation for two or three years prior to the hearing.

The logs are hauled to the mill of the lumber company by the tap line for a distance of 32 miles. Some logs also are brought in by the tap line from spur tracks connecting with the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, over which the tap line enjoys trackage rights for that purpose. On all log movements the lumber company is charged $5 per car, and on log movements of the latter character $2 of the charge goes to the Missouri, Kansas & Texas for the trackage privilege. The manufactured product is switched by the tap line to one or the other of the trunk lines, a distance of a quarter of a mile or 1 mile, as the case may be. It receives no allowances from the Texas & Pacific, but receives from the Missouri, Kansas & Texas a division on lumber of from 2 cents to 5 cents per 100 pounds, the average allowance on each carload of lumber moving over that route being about $22.

The tap line has no passenger traffic; and no logs or lumber were handled for others than the controlling lumber company, the traffic of which for the year 1910 amounted to 26,950 tons of logs and 10,200 tons of lumber. There was, however, a substantial movement of crossties for a firm of railway contractors at a charge of $10 per car for a haul of 18 miles. It is said that 81 per cent of the total tonnage and 82 per cent of the revenue for the year 1910 came from the traffic of the proprietary lumber company.

It was not until 1911 that the tap line filed its first report with the Commission.

  
     
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Text and images were digitized and proofread from the original source documents by Murry Hammond. Contact Murry for all corrections, additions, and contributions of new material.