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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Tunga>Bluefield Daily Telegraph<BR>March 16,
1910</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV align=center><FONT size=4>STEEL RAILS</FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=center>------</DIV>
<DIV align=center><STRONG>Replacing Wooden Ones on Track of Lumber
Company</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV align=left> </DIV>
<DIV align=left> The C. L. Ritter Lumber Company, Inc., is
rushing work on its Virginia plant and is replacing as fast as possible all the
wooden track which it inherited from the Yellow Poplar Lumber Company, which it
recently bought out. The old company had Fifty-four miles of wooden rails
and it is the intention of the new company to replace this track as rapidly as
circumstances demand with steel rails. The company will also go down
Dismal about seventeen miles to reach a large tract of timber. The
company's offices are at Huntington, W. Va., while its working plant is now
located at Whitewood, Va. The C. L. Ritter Lumber Company, the Rockcastle
Lumber Company and the Tug River Lumber Company have joint offices in
Huntington.</DIV>
<DIV align=center>------</DIV>
<DIV align=left> </DIV>
<DIV align=left>[<EM>I have seen old pictures of wooden track lumber railroads,
but I never had any idea that there would be 54 miles of such track in one
operation. The attached picture of a C. L. Ritter Climax locomotive at
Whitewood is from the collection of C. T. Stoner, and is presented here by
courtesy of climaxlocomotives.com. It appears to be on wooden rails.
Whitewood is in Buchanan County, Virginia, on Dismal Creek in an area that was
remote in 1910, so it would be interesting to know how the lumber from that
plant got to market. According to Blackstock and Wilson's article in the
July/August issue of <U>The Arrow</U>, W. M. Ritter's Big Sandy and Cumberland
narrow gauge railroad reached Matney on Slate Creek in 1910, and Matney would be
only three to four miles north of the C. L. Ritter line down Dismal Creek.
Could there have been a connection over the divide between Dismal and Slate
creeks for C. L. Ritter lumber to go out on the BS&C?
Incidentally, the C. L. Ritter Lumber Co. is still in existence in
Huntington according to the websites such as <A
href="http://www.manta.com">www.manta.com</A>. </EM>]</DIV>
<DIV align=left> </DIV>
<DIV align=left><FONT size=6 face=Script>Gordon
Hamilton</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>