Southern Pacific's "Termite Train" on the Lufkin Subdivision

The History Center, last page, an excerpt from a
 Beaumont-Terminals map

A Texas branch is way out of my territory. But the comments provide enough insight into railroad operations that I wanted to record them.

George Rivera Sr. posted a question about the Termite Train to an international Facebook group. The term is unique enough that some people knew exactly what he was talking about.

John Kovatch The termite train ran on the Lufkin Sub on the SP picking up loaded wood chip hopper cars and carrying them to the paper mill in Pasadena.

Dennis Lee Whittredge Sr. A real drag of a train! Put you in the siding and let all the hot shots by you until you hogged out! Most of the time if they called me for it off my regular HTC division I would turn it down unless I was unlucky enough for RFE McNamara got me on the phone then I would reluctantly accept the call! LMAO!

Chris Madera They put you in all the holes.

Buddy Simons It was a Wood Chip train that ran on "The Rabbit"

The Lufkin Sub went from Lufkin to Houston. [RailWire] This gave me enough info to look for the sub on a map. Reading Marshal's thread on RailWire, this subdivision goes through a serious lumbering industry area. Below is one of the photos he posted. Note the cars loaded with logs on the siding. "Moscow: Second longest siding on the layout. Siding is used for storage and to build LUHOM or the Termite Train as crews called it. This where the SP interchanged with MCSA. Primary traffic interchanged is plywood and woodchips."

Marshall