I lived in Ripley, MS in the late 1940's and rode on the Little Rebel from Jackson, TN to Ripley a couple of times. Sometime in the spring of 1948 my Grandfather came by my school and picked me up, he said that the Little Rebel had wrecked South of Ripley and we were going to see it. When we arrived at the wreck there were a number of automobiles parked on the side of the road (Hwy 15), it was only a short distance from the road to the track. The Little Rebel and the freight engine were both still on the track, there was hardly any damage to the freight engine but the front of the Little Rebel was badly crumpled. The story we were told was that the Little Rebel was running late, as usual, and had come around a curve heading South and the freight engine was heading north. The engineer in the freight set the bakes and jumped out of the engine, the engineer of the Little Rebel did the same thing. At the time of impact the freight engine was stopped but the Little Rebel was still rolling. The only injury was to a crewman who was in the engine toilet and he was killed. In 1949 we moved to Jackson, TN and the Little Rebel was in the GM&O rail yard there. It had been towed up there and parked. It sat there for several years and finally disappeared. The Little Rebel was replaced by a bus and that was the end of an era. For most of the time I lived in Ripley the GM&O was still using steam engines to pull their freight trains, I enjoyed watching them come through Ripley. There was a grade from north of Blue Mountain to north of Ripley so the engines were pulling hard, some times there would be an engine pulling and an engine pushing. Love those steam engines.
I used to run trains on that line when I worked for the Mississippi and Tennessee RailNet. That is a pretty good grade, especially in the town of Ripley itself.
I understand the railroad is now abandoned north of Ripley, and south of New Albany. When I worked there (1998 to 2003), the line ran from Houston, MS to Middleton, TN.
The railroad was actually the result of a merger of two 3-foot gauge lines. On the south end of New Albany, you can see the roadbed where the narrow gauge ran through a swamp. I think most of the rest of the line was simply re-gauged to standard gauge.
Houston was at one time an interchange point between the Gulf, Mobile and Northern and the Mobile and Ohio. They merged in 1940. The M&O station was still standing in Houston last time I was there. It is now an antique shop.
Les