Dependence on rails. Like logging and mining companies, large plantation companies often depended on rail transportation to move their products out of fields and onto main lines. This was especially true in Cuba, the southern United States and in Hawaii.

Equipment, especially rails and locomotives, were identical to equipment used on logging railroads. Unlike logging companies, not every plantation used trains.

A few plantations were originally included in the first and second editions of my catalog. Since then, I have removed all plantation railroads except those that used the word "railroad" or "ferrocarril" in their names.

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