Wichita Falls and Southern wooden caboose No. 5 at Wichita Falls, TX in 1952.
(Internet photo, Fair use, Title 17, Section 107)
WICHITA FALLS AND SOUTHERN RAILROAD
The Wichita Falls and Southern Railroad Company was incorporated on November 1, 1920, by Frank Kell, J. A. Kemp, and others to construct an extension from the end of the Wichita Falls and Southern Railway at New Castle to Jimkurn, a distance of thirty-eight miles.
The company was placed in operation on July 1, 1921, and on that date also leased the Wichita Falls and Southern Railway. With the completion of the Wichita Falls, Ranger and Fort Worth to Jimkurn in 1921, the three lines formed a through route between Dublin and Wichita Falls. In August 1927 the Wichita Falls and Southern Railroad acquired the stock of the Wichita Falls and Southern Railway and also the stock of the Wichita Falls, Ranger and Fort Worth, which was also leased. In that year the Wichita Falls and Southern Railroad also secured trackage rights over the Wichita Falls and Oklahoma system from Wichita Falls to Waurika, Oklahoma. Their operations thus extended from Dublin in Erath County to Waurika, Oklahoma.
After Kemp's death in 1930, Kell became the company's president, assisted by his son Joe and Joe J. Perkins as vice president at company headquarters in Wichita Falls. In 1929 the company owned eleven locomotives, 147 freight cars, five passenger cars, and fifteen company cars, and was listed as a Class II road by the Railroad Commission. Earnings for the year were $81,082 in passenger revenue, $913,226 in freight revenue, and $30,465 in other revenue.
The Wichita Falls and Southern Railroad and its leased companies were merged on December 31, 1940. At its peak the Wichita Falls and Southern had around 400 employees. However, the deaths of Joe and Frank Kell, along with floods, strikes, and high wages, compounded the line's troubles by 1948. In 1952 the company was unaffiliated. That year the road earned $524,407 in freight revenue and $7,454 in other revenue. It was abandoned in 1954. About forty miles of the Wichita Falls and Southern between Graham and a point just south of Breckenridge was acquired and operated by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific until 1969, when this segment was also abandoned.
Reference: H. Allen Anderson, “Wichita Falls and Southern Railroad,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed April 17, 2024, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/wichita-falls-and-southern-railroad. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.