by Yago Cecchini/photos as noted
In the heart of the East Texas Piney Woods lies the Henderson Overton Branch Railroad, a 14-mile rail line owned by Rusk County and operated by Blacklands Railroad. Its rich history dates back to 1874, when the Henderson & Overton Branch Railroad Company was chartered to provide rail access to the small town of Henderson. Completed in 1877, it ran southeast from an interchange point with International & Great Northern at Overton. I&GN would acquire this railroad just three years later and operate it until 1911. During a period of financial strain, I&GN went into receivership and was reorganized twice until it was brought into the Gulf Coast Lines system owned by Jay Gould and folded into Missouri Pacific. In 1956, it was officially merged into MP.
The HOB Branch would be operated by MoPac well into the 20th century until the merger with Union Pacific in 1982. Under UP, the branch was used by a local which served a handful of customers that remained on the line. Traffic gradually declined to a point where the line sat dormant for two years until 2008, when UP officially filed for abandonment.
Worried that they would never be able to get rail service back, local officials stepped in. The county government established the Rusk County Rural Rail District to negotiate an agreement to purchase the line from UP. The district collaborated with the Henderson Economic Development Corporation and the Henderson City Council in its negotiations with UP, which accepted an offer in October 2009. The deal was closed in May 2010 to officially purchase the line and keep it in service. Blacklands Railroad, then based out of Sulphur Springs, Texas, was selected as the operator, with an opening ceremony held on June 24 that same year. The railroad quickly established itself as a key factor in the region’s economic future.
ABOVE: The first customer the local served this day was the West Fraser lumber facility, which had a single loaded centerbeam car to pull on July 24, 2023. Rail service here will resume once the company finishes expanding its mill. —Mark Labrozzi photo
Blacklands Railroad
Today, Blacklands Railroad remains one of the county’s most important assets. It hauls a variety of commodities such as lumber, asphalt, steel, aggregates, and chemicals, in addition to offering railcar storage. Trains run from Henderson to Overton twice a week carrying empties, with two return trips hauling loads picked up from UP. In 2017, it built a transload facility in Henderson under subsidiary Black Gold Terminals. It offers an on-site forklift and lay-down storage to facilitate the transportation of commodities to surrounding East Texas cities such as Tyler and Longview. Inbound traffic includes drilling components for the dozens of active pump jacks in this area, frac sand, aggregate, specialty products, bricks, and asphalt oil for the Trinity Asphalt plant.
The railroad recently completed the delivery of pipe loads for a natural gas pipeline being constructed nearby. This required the delivery of 487 flatcars over five months. Pipe trains arrived in 24-car cuts at a time, with 12 being unloaded per day. Outbound empties usually reached 80 to 90 cars.
At the time this article was written, there were no outbound loads from Henderson. However, that will soon change. Service is projected to grow over the next few years, with several new and existing customers increasing rail shipments. The railroad is actively seeking new customers, as they can be easily accommodated using the Henderson transload yard.
On November 2, 2022, West Fraser lumber company held a groundbreaking ceremony for the redevelopment of its mill, investing approximately $255 million into the Henderson site. As a result of the expansion, it plans to rely more on rail service for outbound timber products.
ABOVE: Leading an empty westbound 96-car stone train past milepost 5 in New London is Union Pacific AC4400CW 107, which wore an unpatched Southern Pacific scheme on March 25, 2015. Unit trains like this will return in the near future. —Mark Labrozzi photo
Meridian Brick recently reactivated its rail siding after 30 years of inactivity, with its first inbound set of brick loads arriving by boxcar from its Georgia plant in August 2021. Trinity Asphalt also built a multimillion-dollar liquid asphalt unloading facility in Henderson. One loaded tank car holds four truckloads of liquid asphalt, making shipments more efficient and reducing highway congestion. Tyler Pipe & Couplings inaugurated a new transload facility across from the Trinity Asphalt plant on October 30, 2023, which will soon be used to load outbound pipes on centerbeam flatcars.
In 2020, HOB was awarded more than $8 million from the Federal Railroad Administration in the form of a Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements grant. Work will soon begin to rehabilitate the entire branch, raising speeds from 10 mph to 25 mph while constructing two new sidings at the UP interchange point and two other new sidings at Henderson to hold unit trains.
In February, the railroad purchased 29 acres of land in Henderson to construct a new rail yard to accommodate the forecasted increase in traffic. These improvements will allow the railroad to provide more flexibility, customer service, and accessibility to shippers, as well as encourage new capital investments from potential customers in East Texas.
ABOVE: BLR GP8 201 sits at the Henderson Transload Facility on July 24, 2023, where it will eventually get restored to service. The engine, still wearing its Garden City & Western scheme, has been on the property for about two decades. —Mark Labrozzi photos
Locomotives and Rolling Stock
The beginning of 2025 saw some changes to HOB’s roster. It previously used an eclectic set of four EMD locomotives, two of which were leasers. BLR SD50 2301 was built in 1974 for Chicago & North Western and it currently wears the new green and gray Blacklands livery. This unit previously worked the Luminant Monticello Power Plant, but was reassigned to the railroad’s nine-mile Winfield to Mount Pleasant line in December 2024.
BLR GP8 201 was built in 1952 as a GP7 for Pittsburgh & Lake Erie, and was later rebuilt into a GP8 by Illinois Central Gulf. It retains a red and yellow scheme from Garden City Western Railway in Kansas. This unit is currently out of service, awaiting repairs at the Henderson transload yard.
Locomotives 3814 and 3905 were built in 1964 and 1965, respectively, as GP35s for the Santa Fe. 3905 is now a GP39-3 and has a distinctive livery, one of two locomotives painted for Mexico’s Baja California Railroad. It spent a couple of years in service just across the border from San Diego along with GP38-3 3814 before returning to the U.S. These units left the property in February of this year…