Louis Saillard of Baton Rouge, LA, a rail photographer and historian, documented the history of the Louisiana Midland through the 1970s. He wrote the following about the employees of the Louisiana Midland: The employees of the Louisiana Midland were that rare breed typical of down-home short line railroads, willing to sand a locomotive by carrying heavy bags of sand up the engine’s ladders and pouring sand in by hand. When the locomotive’s sanders didn’t work, they were willing to ride the engine steps and pour sand on the rails by hand – an almost forgotten art. They spent long hours riding slow trains across featureless soybean fields in summer heat, and they spent too many hours rerailing heavy box cars which had sunk to their frames in winter mud. They saw the beauty in RS-1 locomotives shooting flames from their stacks as they double-headed heavy trains of pulpwood before dawn, and they understood why railfans did too. That the Louisiana Midland did not prosper was not the fault of its people.

(Photo by Louis Saillard; from the Brian Allison photo collection.)