Some visitors share memories of the Old Hickory Railroad with Andy Martin.
Others ask if the railroad will be revived, but Martin doesn't know. He was the engineer for the amusement park-style railroad that once gave visitors tours around Jackson, the population 3,707-person Louisiana town about 50 miles north of Baton Rouge.
Martin says he would do it again if given the chance.
But the railroad's engine has been standing idle since 2009, after blowing its whistle one last time. If there were a soundtrack for this story, now would be a good time to cue Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues."
I hear that train a comin', a comin' round the bend ...
Well, it wasn't the whistle Mark Jeffers of Baton Rouge remembers about the train. He just remembers seeing the train in operation, which prompted him to inquire about the Old Hickory Railroad.
"What years did it run through Jackson, and why did it stop?" he asked.
The company that manufactured the Old Hickory Railroad train manufactured 21 engines for amusement parks in the 1960s. The Old Hickory engine was No. 2 in that series.
Those questions are easy for Martin to answer.
"Leroy Harvey brought the train here in the late '90s," he said. "He changed the fuel system from wood to propane in 1999, and he started running it in 2000."
Harvey is an entrepreneur who invested time and money into promoting Jackson and its surrounding area in East Feliciana Parish through the years. He now lives in Baton Rouge, but he still has investments in the area, including an antiques store.
The Old Hickory Railroad once transported visitors on a guided tour through the small East Feliciana Parish town of Jackson.
Labeling the Old Hickory Railroad an ambitious project would be an understatement, because the project involved more than just the engine and its cars. There also were ties and tracks to be laid, along with a depot and maintenance barn.
Harvey wasn't deterred.
One of the Old Hickory Railroad's abandoned train cars stands next to the train track behind the Old Hickory Railroad Museum in Jackson.
"He began negotiating with the State of Louisiana to lay track and run the train on state property, because right up the road is Centenary State Historic Site, which is owned by the state," Martin said. "He also had to get permission to lay track under La. 10, and it took him two years of negotiating with the state. He finally got all the permits and everything laid."
Meanwhile, the tracks and ties were donated. The train came to Jackson from a Cherokee, North Carolina, amusement park called Frontier Land. The 140-acre, wild west theme park operated outside the Smoky Mountains National Park from 1964 to 1982.
"Dollywood opened in Pigeon Forge, and its popularity caused the closure of Frontier Land," Martin said.
Andy Martin took over engineering duties of the Old Hickory Railroad in 2003.
The park's logo of an Indian Chief in a full feather headdress is prominent at the top of a faded, framed Frontier Land brochure inside the Old Hickory Railroad depot. The leaflet touts the park's offerings of an aerial gondola, a petting zoo, more than 20 rides and, of course, a wood-burning steam train.
Engine No. 2 pulled six cars equipped with bench seats. An insignia of a gun superimposed over the number six was stamped on each end of the seats, representing the section of the park known as "6 Gun Territory."
"As I understand it, there were 21 of these locomotives that were built, and each of them were numbered," Martin said. "Ours was No. 2, and it ran through '6 Gun Territory.'"
Once in the territory, the train stopped for wild west gunfight show.
One of the Old Hickory Railroad's cars still stands in its original state, when it was the '6 Gun Territory' train that ran through the Frontier Land theme park in Cherokee, North Carolina.
Though Harvey reconfigured the train cars' with protective metal sidings and a center aisle, one car still stands in its original state inside the maintenance barn. Unfortunately, the engine stands immobile only a few feet from the old '6 Gun Territory' car, where it hasn't moved since 2009, when the State Fire Marshal paid a visit to the Old Hickory.
"One day, in 2009, two carloads of state fire marshals showed up here, and they went over the train with a fine tooth comb," Martin said. "They found a bunch of stuff they didn't like, and they wrote a cease and desist letter to Mr. Harvey. They told him that he could not operate this train until he did one, two, three, four, five, six — all of these things. Now, some of those demands Mr. Harvey thought were unreasonable, so he shut it down."
The train sat for two years when another investor took interest in putting it back together, but that effort never materialized. Vegetation has since overtaken parts of the track, and many of the ties need replacing.
The Old Hickory Railroad's train cars were reconfigured with protective metal walls on each side and a center aisle separating bench seats.
The Old Hickory Railroad depot stands behind old Jackson High School, formerly the W.R. McKowen School, at 3406 College St., which now houses the Republic of West Florida Republic Museum — currently closed — in the front and the Old Hickory Railroad Museum in the back.
The railroad museum is home to the Greater Baton Rouge Model Railroaders, whose members entertain visitors on the second and fourth Saturdays by running their model trains in two rooms of elaborate dioramas.
These museums also were established by Harvey, and the tracks for his railroad still run between the museum and depot.
"The depot was actually an old house located somewhere else in Jackson," Martin said. "Mr. Harvey had it moved here and converted to a depot."
Andy Martin, former engineer for the Old Hickory Railroad in Jackson, points out the railroad's figure eight track printed on a topical map of Jackson. The 3½-mile, guided town tour took 45 minutes.
Tickets — $7 for adults, $5 for students and $3 for younger children — were sold at the depot, where visitors caught the train for the 3½-mile ride on Saturdays and Sundays.
The track actually covered 2½ miles, but the train had to repeat one of the track's miles in the figure eight journey. Sights along the 45-minute ride included Feliciana Cellars Winery, the family burial plot of Jackson founder John Horton, a historical Native American mound, the East Feliciana State Hospital, Graveyard Hill Battle Site where a Civil War battle was fought in Jackson, a Confederate cemetery, Centenary State Historic Site and the Republic of West Florida Museum.
Martin ran the engine on two, 100-pound propane tanks, while his wife, Bettye, stood in the first car providing narration on a sound system.
Andy Martin, former engineer for the Old Hickory Railroad, stands in the railroad depot's waiting room, where children once celebrated birthday parties on authentic train station benches before taking the train tour of Jackson.
"She was the conductor," Martin said. "We ran the train at 3 o'clock on Saturdays and Sundays from March until November."
Martin wasn't the railroad's first operator. The original engineer stepped down after an unrelated injury, so Harvey turned to Martin, who took over in 2003.
He not only learned how to operate the engine but also navigated the track's many nuances, including the hill that ran alongside Feliciana Cellars Winery.
"I had to slow the train to build up pressure in the tank, which would power the train up the hill," Martin said. "So, my wife would tell a long story while I did that. The train moved slow, and it was a challenge to get up that hill."
A photo in the Old Hickory Railroad depot shows Andy Martin standing on the front of the engine in 2003, when started working as the railroad's engineer.
Yes, the train moved slow at 5 miles per hour, but visitors didn't seem to mind. The Old Hickory Railroad was a major draw, often attracting large groups for weekend rides.
So, what were the state fire marshal's citations that shut down the Old Hickory Railroad? The main issue was related to how the propane tanks were stored in the tender pulled directly behind the engine.
"Mr. Harvey had two 100-gallon propane tanks that sat up here in the tender," Martin said, pointing to the front of the contraption. "The fire marshal did not like that. They thought the propane tanks sitting in the front were too close to the firebox in the back of the locomotive, and they wanted those two tanks moved to the back of the tender."
Compliance to the order would have meant massive reconstruction of the tender.
"Mr. Harvey thought that that was unreasonable, so that's one of the main reasons he decided to shut it down," Martin said.