ENTERPRISE RAILWAY. The Enterprise Railway Company was incorporated in 1,903, and operates 12 miles of standard-gauge track connecting with the Iron Mountain at Simms and penetrating the timber of the Enterprise Lumber Company, whose mill is located on the tracks of the Iron Mountain in Alexandria, La. The tap line has trackage rights from the junction of its own rails at Simms over the Iron Mountain to the mill at Alexandria, this right being limited to the operation of logging trains at a charge of 50 cents per train-mile. The tap line has 4 locomotives and 71 cars. The lumber company has no equipment. The tap line builds and maintains spurs into the timber wherever required for logging operations. The tap line hauls the logs all the way from the loading point in the woods to the mill at Alexandria; and a charge of $1.50 per 1,000 feet is made against the lumber company for the expense of maintaining the logging spurs, hauling the logs over them, and the unloading of the logs at the mill. The trunk line switches the manufactured product from the mill and pays the tap line a division of from 2 to 5 cents per 100 pounds out of the joint rates which are published as applying from Clear Creek, the terminus of the tap line in the woods.

The tap line has an inconsiderable traffic in merchandise and miscellaneous freight, and the revenue from the staves and hardwood which it moves for others than the lumber company amounts to but 3 or 4 per cent of its total revenue. The only through rates in which it participates are those on yellow-pine lumber, all other freight paying a local charge to Simms in addition to the rates of the Iron Mountain.

The operations of the tap line appear not to have been profitable, and the lumber company has supplied more than $100,000 to meet operating deficits.