Sicily Island railroad tracks completed around 1896

From Sicily Island:  A Partial History, compiled by Mickie Smith:

The town site was surveyed in March 1892, and recorded and filed the same year. (Clerk of Court Records, Catahoula Parish, Conveyance Bk. 5, p. 536)

There was also a depot at Peck, named for Mr. Thomas Peck, who sold right-of-way to the railroad.  (Peck, IV Will, History of Sicily Island, 1976, p. 10)

With the completion of the railroad, transportation by waterways began to decline.

Steam Engine fired with coal

The train engines were run by steam fired with coal.  Railroad water tanks were placed by the tracks, with the closest one located just across the Tensas River in the town of Clayton.  These tanks were elevated on a platform with a goose-neck that let down to fill the boiler with water.

Since the cattle would stray onto the tracks, the trains had a cow catcher on the front to throw the cows off the track in an effort to prevent a train wreck.  Of course this resulted in many cows being killed.  

 

When the cattle were killed by the train, the railroad company paid the owner a fair price for the cow, and many times there were more than one killed.  Any livestock that strayed on the tracks was killed, but it seemed that there was more cattle than horses or mules. 

In the book Northeast Louisiana, written by Fred Williamson in 1937, there is this description and result of stock on the tracks:

Just as in modern times the motor car is a lure for rushing, barking, snapping canines, so when the trains first came through this country, wild-eyed dogs would rush to the railroad tracks and try to get a leg-hold on the wheels of engines or cars, only to be crushed to death.  And the stock that was killed in those days!  Long after the twentieth century had come in, the long-drawn whistle of the trains would call all the people within hearing distance to the galleries to see whose animal was being run over.  Cows, horses and mules were being constantly mutilated as they did not seem to know how to get off the track.  They would gallop down the track in front of a train until the cow catcher pushed them off, usually too mutilated to survive.  It became a tradition that the "railroads never kill any but the most valuable animals".  A railroad claim agent once said:  "It may take years to develop pure bred stock on the farm, but a railway train can turn a scrub cow into a thoroughbred in the twinklin of an eye".

The trains held a fascination for people, and it was great adventure to ride on them.  Mr. Willie Disch related this amusing incident, which had been told to him by his grandmother, Mrs. Henrietta Smith.

Mrs. Lee wanted badly to ride the train, but lacking the funds or reason to travel any distance, she got her husband, who was a logger, to take her to Peck in the log wagon.  Here she boarded the train and rode to Sicily Island where she got off and waited for her husband to come in the wagon and pick her up.

The next Sunday at church, she asked Mrs. Smith, "Did you 'seed' me, Mrs. Smith, when I was ridin' on the train?"  "No, I didn't see you, Mrs. Lee", replied Mrs. Smith.

Mrs. Lee wanted so badly to have been seen riding the train she just had to ask again.  "Are you real 'shore' you didn't 'seed' me, Mrs. Smith?  I 'shuck' my shawl out the window at you when I passed 'yore' house!"

The railroad was completed through here around 1896.  For some time there had been cave-offs on the bluff.  When the railroad bed was laid, rather deep ditches were dug on both sides of it, with this dirt being used to raise the elevation of the tracks.  While these ditches were beneficial as drainage for the town, they also had their disadvantages in that they were instrumental in causing more and larger cave-offs on the bluff toward the trestle.