The late Louis Saillard had visited the Gloster Southern Railroad during its tenure operating on the line between Columbia and Silver Creek, both located in Mississippi. In October of 1989 he captured this view of the line’s sole locomotive and its train as it crossed the trestle at Silver Creek. Ralph Hawkins has a nice write-up about this operation on his website HawkinsRails, and I borrowed extensively for this post from the same.

This is the introduction to Ralph’s article: “Columbia Route operations . . . From November 1988 to December 1995, the Gloster Southern operated the 29 mile line from Silver Creek to Columbia, Mississippi. Dubbed the “Columbia Route” by Georgia Pacific, the line was originally built by the Gulf & Ship Island Railroad just after the turn of the century. After the Illinois Central Gulf sold the line in 1982, it was operated by the Columbia & Silver Creek Railroad until 1988, when the GLSR took control.”

Note the Columbia Route lettering on the locomotive. She’s an EMD model SW900 switcher producing 900 HP. She was built for the Hammond Redwood Lumber Co. in September of 1959. Having changed ownership several times, she finally arrived on the Gloster Southern.