The NOT&M was headquartered in New Orleans, and owned or leased a number of other railroads in Louisiana and Texas, operating them all together as the Gulf Coast Lines.

According to the Handbook of Texas Online,[9] The coming of the railroad and irrigation made the Valley into a major agricultural center.

NOT&M trains were ferried across the Mississippi River at Baton Rouge until 1947,[12] several years after the Huey P. Long Bridge (carrying a highway and a railroad track) was built in 1940.

This segment opened for service on September 1, 1909, with trackage rights via the Louisiana Railway and Navigation Company (later acquired by the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway)[13] from Baton Rouge to New Orleans; after 1916, GCL trains used trackage rights on the parallel Illinois Central route instead.

[14] Yoakum's planned extensions of the GCL from Brownsville to Tampico and Mexico City, as well as from Baton Rouge to Memphis, never materialized.

[35] Also in the postwar era, MoPac's Houstonian and Orleanean ran between New Orleans and Houston, covering the 367 miles in nine or ten hours.