"Logging railroads were extremely expensive items. Only the wholesale use of the forest's resources justified their construction. As a result, a period of clearcutting and intensive exploitation often followed the construction of the railroad. In northern Pennsylvania the logging railroad period constituted the highest degree of forest utilization that the world has ever seen in any commercial lumbering area. Every species and almost every part of the tree was utilized—from pine butts and limbs to waste slabs and sawdust. The Kaul and Hall mill at Saint Mary's, was typical of many of the cutting operations of the late nineteenth century. It specialized in processing hemlock logs. A stave company in the same town cut Kaul and Hall's hardwoods, while a kindling wood company used the waste from the Kaul and Hall mill. A chemical plant converted the smaller hardwoods into methanol (wood alcohol) and acetate of lime (calcium acetate)".

from Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain p. 188.