The Ashley, Drew and Northern Railway was a Class III railroad operating 40.7 miles of track between Monticello and Crossett, Arkansas. The railroad operated from 1912 until 1996.

History

In 1905, the Crossett Lumber Company of Crossett, Arkansas, started its own rail line, the Crossett Railway, a 10-mile rail line that largely transported logs and lumber. In 1912, the Crossett Railway was sold to the newly created Crossett, Monticello & Northern Railroad, which had planned to build a line from Crossett north to Monticello, Arkansas. The Ashley, Drew and Northern was incorporated on August 8, 1912, to build a railroad from Cremer to Monticello, Arkansas. The AD&N also purchased the Crossett, Monticello & Northern Railway at the same time and opened the line up to Monticello in July 1913. From 1914 until 1920, the Ashley, Drew and Northern was leased and operated by the Arkansas, Louisiana and Gulf Railway. The

Georgia-Pacific Georgia-Pacific LLC is an American pulp and paper company based in Atlanta, Georgia, and is one of the world's largest manufacturers and distributors of tissue, pulp, paper, toilet and paper towel dispensers, packaging, building products and r ...

Corporation acquired control of the AD&N and the Crossett Lumber Company on July 31, 1963. By the 1980s and 1990s, traffic included

lumber Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, wi ...

plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...

, paper products and chemicals. The railroad's headquarters office and enginehouse both were located in Crossett.

Abandonment

In early 1991, Georgia-Pacific formed the

Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi Railroad The Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi Railroad is a short-line railroad in northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas. Opened in 1908, it has undergone several corporate reorganizations, but has remained independent of larger carriers. In 2004, ...

subsidiary to purchase the rail line by the same name, whose owners had been planning to abandon it. Georgia-Pacific soon began transferring southbound traffic to the AL&M's nearby tracks because the AD&N's track was steeper and more expensive to maintain. On June 25, 1995, Georgia-Pacific announced that the AD&N no longer had sufficient work to justify keeping the line open. On August 15, 1995, Georgia-Pacific petitioned the

Interstate Commerce Commission The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was a regulatory agency in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads (and later trucking) to ensure fair rates, to eliminat ...

to abandon 35 miles of the AD&N from Monticello to Whitlow Junction, Arkansas. The ICC granted the request to abandon the Ashley, Drew and Northern, and the AD&N made its final run on June 29, 1996. (The railroad's remaining 5.7 miles of track, between Whitlow Junction and Crossett was sold on June 30, 1996, to Georgia-Pacific-owned sister railroad Fordyce and Princeton Railroad, which had long been operating on the segment between Crossett and Whitlow Junction through trackage rights.)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashley Drew Northern Railway Defunct Arkansas railroads Railway companies established in 1912 Railway companies disestablished in 1996 Georgia-Pacific 1912 establishments in Arkansas American companies established in 1912