Briefly around 1906 however, the road basked in the limelight of the mighty E.H. Harriman who considered, and then discarded, the idea of incorporating it into one of his "paper" railroads projected through the region.

The bottleneck of the operation was the transfer of the lumber from the mill at Bella Vista to the nearest rail connection, which was 10 miles (16 km) away in Redding and on the wrong side of the Sacramento River.

Little grading was required, the only major obstacle being the crossing of the Sacramento River north of Anderson which was originally done with a ferry.

The top speed was around 15 miles per hour (24 km/h) and most of the business came from the mills in Bella Vista, although other producers used the line on occasion.

It seems that the Anderson and Bella Vista Railroad mainline lay directly in the path of the Goose Lake and Southern Railway, a Harriman contrivance, an arm of which was projected into the area in 1906 on its way from the Goose Lake area, via Alturas, some 227 miles (365 km) to a connection with the SP at Anderson.

The Afterthought Copper Company was experiencing declining revenues with the loss of lumber traffic at Bella Vista and the railroad went idle.

By March 1920, the Red River Lumber Company was in control and pumped men and money into the railroad, laying new ties and rails where needed on the CS&E, as well as improving and restoring logging operations on Round Mountain and rebuilding the mill at Bella Vista.

Operations on the railroad became infrequent, although for unknown reasons, the Red River Lumber Company continued to spend money on the line.

The remaining railroad was torn up in 1937, although official permission to abandon the line was not granted by Interstate Commerce Commission until 1946.