As for the date of construction I am of the opinion that construction was started in 1860 and was still going on in early 1861. The biggest problem would have been the preparation of the roadbed. After that the actual laying of the rails would not have taken very long. If I am not mistaken according to Anthony Rushing, Company "B" of the 2nd Arkansas Infantry was made up of Irish railroad workers. So that would seem to indicate that they were still working on the Railroad when Arkansas seceded in May of 1861. I am fairly certain that no steam engines of railcars would have been shipped to Little Rock after the war broke out. Which would mean that those type of things were shipped to Arkansas prior to 1861. That must have been quite a sight to see those various parts being shipped by Steamboat up the Arkansas.

Appearently there was a telegraph station at Brownsville, because there are several telegraphs in the Hindman's copybook of telegraphs addressed to Brownsville. The railroad ran throught Brownsville or at least very close by. As I said Mr. Snow and Mr. Ketchum advertised for telegraph poles to run the telegraph line along the lenght of the railroad. How all of this relates to the "Old" Brownsville and the present day Brownsville I couldn't say.

Both the railroad and the telegraph seemed to be constructed along the path of least resistance. It the case of the telegraphs of that day it is estimated that it took 6 volts of electricity to power 5 miles of telegraph wire. So the lenght of the telegraph line directly related to how much electricity had to be generate by using a battery. Each cell of that battery being a pint fruit jar size chemical reaction wet cell, and which only generated 1 volt of electricity per cell. So generating electricity was a costly and quite complicated process which required a large amount of space to house these batteries banks.