page_title: Cane Belt Railroad
section_title: Post merger
hierarchical_section_title: Cane Belt Railroad / Post merger
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo shows the Santa Fe Trail at Pecan Street in Wharton, Texas. The view toward the east-southeast.
context_page_description: The Cane Belt Railroad was chartered in the U.S. state of Texas in 1898. Formed by a group of businessmen from Eagle Lake, the short-line railroad was intended to bring the area's sugarcane to market. In 1902 a disagreement between two of the railroad's chief promoters proved deadly. By 1904 the line was in operation from Sealy to Matagorda on the Gulf of Mexico. That year the company's stock was bought by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and the line continued operations under lease to the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway starting in 1905. By the 1920s, the local sugarcane industry collapsed but the railroad was saved by the discovery of two nearby sulphur mines. In 1948, the Cane Belt was merged into the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway. In the 1990s most of the original line was abandoned after the last sulphur mine closed. By 2013, only a small portion of the line south of Bay City was operating as part of the BNSF Railway.
context_section_description: As the local highways improved, more freight was carried by trucks, cutting into railroad traffic. Passenger service between Sealy and Matagorda on the former Cane Belt line was ended on March 12, 1956. The Railroad Commission permitted the abandonment of the Matagorda station in 1967 and the tracks were removed. Demand for sulphur decreased beginning in the 1950s.  The great sulphur mine at Newgulf near Boling stopped production in 1993. In the 1990s almost the entire line was abandoned and the track removed.
  In 1995 Southeastern International Corporation (SEI) acquired the line from Bay City to Wharton. Up to that time, outbound rail traffic consisted of grain shipments while inbound traffic was mostly chicken feed and chemicals. On April 14, 1999, SEI petitioned the Surface Transportation Board to remove 11.76 miles (18.93 km) of track from milepost 42.24 in Wharton to milepost 54.00 near Lane City. SEI complained that rail traffic dropped significantly in 1997 and that BNSF rates increased in 1998, forcing the company to incur a $117,081 loss. On August 2, 1999 the petition was approved, subject to environmental limitations.
  On October 4, 2004, the BNSF Railway applied to the Surface Transportation Board to abandon 20.89 miles (33.62 km) of the line from milepost 66.95 at Bay City to milepost 54.00 at Cane Junction and from milepost 0.00 at Cane Junction to milepost 7.94 at Newgulf. BNSF argued that there had been no rail traffic for two years. The assessment noted that there were four ballast deck frame trestle bridges on the Newgulf extension, all built in 1930. In addition, there were four open pile trestle bridges between Cane Junction and Bay City, all built between 1912 and 1922.
  By 1998, the only part of the old Cane Belt system that still served rail shippers was south of Bay City. In that year, the Celanese Chemical and Lyondell Petrochemical companies shipped approximately 10,000 railcars through Bay City from their facilities. In 2013, other short fragments of the original line existed as sidings at Eagle Lake and Thompsons. A portion of the Cane Belt right-of-way that ran through Wharton has been converted into the 1.62 miles (2.61 km) Santa Fe Trail.
caption: The Santa Fe Trail follows the old Cane Belt Railroad right-of-way in Wharton.
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