Dependence on rails. Like logging companies, many large plantation companies depended on rail transportation to move their products out of fields and onto main line tracks. This was especially true in Cuba, across the American South and in Hawaii.

Equipment, especially rails and locomotives, were identical to new and used equipment used on logging railroads.

Unlike logging companies, not every plantation used trains.

A few plantations were originally included. My original scheme included plantations in the railroad database. All have been removed except for those that use the word "railroad" or "ferrocarril" in their names.

Rightly or wrongly, I decided that very few average collectors would ever think if looking in a book titled, Collectible Stocks and Bonds of North American Railroads for information about the few plantation certificates that exist.