From Facebook, Else Martin
November 1, 1870 – Can you imagine the excitement of finally having a train from Pascagoula to Mobile?
The Chattanooga Railroad – Mobile to Pascagoula
Times Picayune, New Orleans, La., Sept., 21, 1870
About a week ago, we published a description of the New Orleans division of the Chattanooga Railroad, which is soon to connect us with our sister city of Mobile. The Mobile division of the road is completed and in running order to and beyond Pascagoula, over which portion of the road a gentleman of our acquaintance has recently traveled. From conversation with him, we have gleaned some interesting data relative to this new and important artery of commerce.
In Mobile, the railroad depot is temporarily located at the southern extension of Commerce and Water streets. Attached to the temporary depot building are the extensive workshops of the company, covering about five squares of ground. It was at first intended to locate the machine shops somewhere near Mississippi City or Pascagoula, where the grounds could have been purchased for a song. The city of Mobile having, however, made an appropriation of $225,000 to the company, the shops were erected at Mobile. The ordinance making this appropriation has recently been repealed, a strong pressure having been brought to bear against the company.
The several machine shops are provided with the most modern improvements, and give employment to several hundred laborers. An engine of forty horse power moves the many patent machines for sawing and planing lumber. In the same yard is located the car shed, capable of accommodating about eight of the magnificent passenger coaches, which will be used on the road. The passenger coaches are sixty feet long, rest on six wheel trucks, are airy and well ventilated, and furnished with due regard to the comfort of the traveling public.
Midway between the car and locomotive sheds an immensely large turn table, of the latest pattern, is located. The locomotive shed is the largest building in the yard. It contains now, nine of Roger’s celebrated forty-ton locomotives, built in Patterson, N. Y.
One regular passenger train and several construction trains leave Mobile every day for PASCAGOULA, the present terminus of the road. The track is admirably smooth and in excellent condition. The first station is DOG RIVER, eight miles distant; the next station SUMMIT, is nineteen miles from MOBILE; the third is GRAND BAY, a distance of twenty-five miles. After a ride of forty miles, the fourth, and for the present, the last station, EAST PASCAGOULA, is reached. At SUMMIT, a windmill for pumping water into the locomotives has been erected; it has, however, not proven a success, the breeze not being sufficiently strong.
The whole length of the railroad from Mobile to New Orleans will be 138 miles of which 58 miles of the Mobile division and 22 miles of the New Orleans division are now in running order. The passenger trains on the other side are only going as far as Pascagoula, though 18 miles more of the road are finished.
It is now a settled fact that on the 1st of November we will be in railroad connection with Mobile.
N. O., M. & C. R. R. Railroad
Open, Mobile-East Pascagoula
November 12, 1870, Mobile Register
Trains going West
Leave Mobile 3:00 p.m.
Leave Dog River 3:24
Leave Summit 3:55
Leave Grand Bay 4:20
Leave East Pascagoula 5:00
Arrive at Biloxi 6:16
Trains going East
Leave Biloxi 7:00 a.m.
Leave Ocean Springs 7:16
Leave East Pascagoula 8:11
Leave Grand Bay 8:56
Leave Summit 9:14
Leave Dog River 9:49
Arrive at Mobile 10:16
Trains run daily Sundays excepted
C. H. Raynor, Supt.