Higginson Depot - 1908

Rock Island 570, a passenger locomotive on an RI passenger train operating between DeValls Bluff and Searcy, blocks the Iron Mountain mainline at Higginson as baggage and passengers are worked from the Higginson depot circa 1908.  The first car likely is a combination baggage-railway post office car, followed by a passenger coach.  This view either looks northeastward toward St. Louis or southwestward toward Little Rock.  It indicates the Iron Mountain line through Higginson has already been double-tracked,  as the Union Pacific RR main line at Higginson remains today.  The tall, semaphore signal blades (one on each side of the pole on the pole to the right apparently is the Higginson depot's train order signal.  Locomotive 550 was built in Dunkirk, NY, in 1887 and was "cut up" at El Dorado, Arkansas, in 1925.