Texas Railroad History - Tower 16 and Tower 186 - Sherman

Crossings of the Texas & Pacific Railway, the Houston & Texas Central Railway, and the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway


Above: Tower 16, photographed by Larry Paul shortly before it was decommissioned in 2001

Sherman was an early settlement in Texas, founded in 1846 for its location near the center of the newly authorized Grayson County. The Houston & Texas Central (H&TC) Railway arrived from the south in 1872 as it continued construction north from Houston through Dallas heading for the Red River fourteen miles north of Sherman. That same year, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas (MK&T, "Katy") Railroad bridged the Red River and built five miles south to the new town of Denison (named for a Katy vice president), providing rail connections to the Midwest and beyond. This was a boon to the economy of both Denison and Sherman and they grew rapidly. The two railroads worked cooperatively exchanging freight at Denison, and they soon established passenger service connecting Kansas City and St. Louis with Houston and Galveston. By the end of 1883, the H&TC had become controlled by Southern Pacific (SP).

In 1873, the Texas & Pacific (T&P) Railway built 54 miles east from Sherman to Brookston, the initial segment of an east / west line that was completed into Texarkana in 1876. Sherman was the starting point because construction materials could be shipped on the H&TC from ports in Galveston and Houston. The T&P had obtained a Federal charter from Congress to build a southern transcontinental line between Texarkana and San Diego. A route strategy across Texas had been established years earlier by the Texas Legislature when it authorized railroad charters for the predecessor companies that had been acquired by the T&P. Those charters called for two parallel routes from Texarkana to Fort Worth -- a southern route that went south to Marshall and then west to Fort Worth, and a northern route paralleling the Red River to Grayson County that would then turn southwest to Fort Worth. From Fort Worth, a single line would be built to El Paso.

About the time the T&P began construction, rail baron Jay Gould was contemplating ways to get access to Galveston's port for agricultural commodities his Midwest railroads carried. He began eyeing the Katy as a railroad he could expand southward across Texas to the Gulf, but it also connected with his railroads in Missouri. Unfortunately for Gould, he could not simply buy a controlling interest in the Katy. Its stock had become so diluted and widely dispersed among small stockholders that there were few large blocks available for private purchase, and there simply weren't enough shares circulating on the open market. Author Wayne Cline in his 2015 book The Texas Railroad explains that Gould's plan to take over the Katy began innocuously on October 22, 1873 when...

"...he stage-managed the election of a loyal ally, William Bond, as the road's second vice president. Bond proceeded to fire key Katy managers and replace them with Gould's henchmen. On December 21, 1874 Bond was appointed receiver of the MKT, and on March 1, 1876 he became the Katy's general manager. By December, 1879, Bond had brought so many Gould supporters aboard the MKT that Jay was elected president."

The end result was that Gould had little ownership interest in the Katy; he was merely its President. To ensure his continued control, Gould leased the Katy in December, 1880 to the Missouri Pacific (MP) Railroad, a large Missouri-based enterprise controlled by Gould in which he had a large ownership position. Gould planned an expansion of the Katy deep into Texas, intending to use it to route long-haul traffic to and from MP. The lease was onerous to the Katy, the result of accounting and operating policies tilted heavily toward MP. MP stockholders would reap the benefits of Katy operations through profit transfers; the Katy would simply break even. Katy stockholders were powerless to correct the situation unless a majority of them could band together to call a formal stockholders' meeting. With the stock heavily diluted, this seemed an impossible task.

Gould had also begun targeting the T&P which was having difficulty raising funds for its pending construction from Fort Worth to El Paso. Gould established a syndicate to purchase the stock of T&P President Thomas Scott for $3.5 million and offered to lay T&P's tracks toward El Paso in exchange for $20,000 in T&P stocks and $20,000 in T&P bonds for each mile completed. With the offer accepted, Gould restarted T&P construction west from Fort Worth in 1879. As construction proceeded, Gould progressively gained financial control of the T&P with each mile built. He was named President in April, 1881. The T&P's track construction never reached El Paso, stopping instead at Sierra Blanca where a deal between Gould and SP Chairman C. P. Huntington resulted in the T&P sharing SP's track into El Paso.

In 1879, Katy investors and other interests chartered the Denison & Pacific (D&P) Railroad and built a line west from Denison to Gainesville. In November, 1881, Gould directed the Katy to acquire formal ownership of the D&P tracks. This was important because a few months earlier, Gould had begun his presidency of the T&P by starting to build its line from Sherman to Fort Worth, the last remaining track segment of the T&P's original route strategy. Gould directed that construction proceed from Sherman west to Whitesboro and then turn southwest to Fort Worth. He did this because the Katy's D&P line had passed through Whitesboro, about seventeen miles due west of Sherman. Thus, a T&P / Katy connection could be established in Whitesboro effectively creating a direct route between Denison and Fort Worth for the Katy. Upon completion, Gould directed the T&P to sell unlimited rights on the Whitesboro - Fort Worth segment, effectively creating a main line for the Katy between its Red River bridge and Fort Worth. The Whitesboro - Fort Worth segment became known as the Joint Track for the next hundred years, and the railroads shared its maintenance expenses.

South of Whitesboro, the Joint Track passed through the town of Denton which Gould saw as a connecting point for service to Dallas (the T&P already served Dallas with its main east / west line from Texarkana via Marshall.) Under T&P ownership, Gould bought the bankrupt Dallas & Wichita Railway and extended it seventeen miles north to Denton. The T&P then sold this Dallas - Denton line to the Katy in December, 1881, giving the Katy its own route between Denison and Dallas via Whitesboro and Denton. The Katy came under lease to MP that same month, and Gould ensured that all construction publicity attributed this work to MP. The Katy now had its own routes from Denison to Fort Worth and Dallas, but to the public, this was simply an MP expansion further into Texas.

In 1886, the St. Louis, Arkansas & Texas (SLA&T) Railway took over the bankrupt Texas & St. Louis Railway and converted its tracks from narrow gauge to standard gauge. The SLA&T's primary route ran from Texarkana to Mt. Pleasant, then southwest to Tyler, Waco and beyond. To capitalize on the burgeoning rail activity at Sherman, the SLA&T built 109 miles from Mt. Pleasant to Sherman in 1887. The main line connection at Mt. Pleasant gave the SLA&T a direct route between Sherman and Texarkana, longer but essentially parallel to T&P's northern line, and with greater population. Financial problems ensued, and by 1891, the SLA&T had been acquired out of receivership by the St. Louis Southwestern (SSW, "Cotton Belt") Railway.

In the late 1880s, Gould's control over the Katy lapsed -- he was fired by its shareholders once they were able to organize a stockholders' meeting. The Texas Supreme Court voided MP's lease and the Katy resumed independence in 1891 under a Texas charter granted later that year. In 1890, a new railroad, the Sherman, Denison & Dallas Railway, was chartered to lay tracks from Denison to Sherman under a plan to build a better route for the Katy due south to Dallas (but the line was never extended to Dallas.) The T&P then built their own line to Denison from Sherman in 1896 under the charter of the Denison & Pacific Suburban Railroad. The tracks went eight miles north to Denison departing from the T&P main line three miles east of Sherman.

The last major railroad to enter Sherman was the St. Louis & San Francisco ("Frisco") Railway c.1901. The Frisco had routes through Oklahoma and Missouri, and its President, B. F. Yoakum, decided to enter the north Texas market as part of a larger plan to compete with SP along the Gulf coast. With an agreement to share the Katy bridge over the Red River, the Frisco built south to Denison where they were able to negotiate a trackage rights agreement with the H&TC between Denison and Sherman. A Frisco-sponsored railroad, the Red River, Texas & Southern Railway, was chartered to build from Sherman to Fort Worth. Construction stopped in 1902 at Carrollton in north Dallas County where trackage rights on the Cotton Belt to Fort Worth were negotiated.

Left: area map c.1905. In addition to Sherman, Dallas and Fort Worth, interlockers were eventually installed at Denison, Carrolton, Garland, Greenville, Celeste, Whitewright, Bells and Gainesville.

 

Right: Railway News, July 28, 1900

B. F. Yoakum was a native Texan who had risen from a track gang job on the International & Great Northern to become President of the Frisco in 1900 at age 41. As CEO of the Frisco in 1904, he was also named Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, effectively its CEO. SP granted the Frisco rights on the H&TC between Denison and Sherman because SP knew it would benefit by carrying Frisco freight south from Dallas and Fort Worth to Houston despite Yoakum's plan to compete aggressively with SP along the Gulf coast, a story best told elsewhere.

By the early 1900s, there were tracks in Sherman owned by five major railroads: 1) the H&TC, which had come under SP control in 1883; 2) the Katy, which had service to St. Louis to complement its large network in Texas serving Dallas, Houston, Galveston, Waco and San Antonio; 3) the T&P, which operated northern and southern routes from Texarkana to Fort Worth continuing to El Paso, plus tracks from Marshall east into Louisiana; 4) the Cotton Belt, which had various lines from Texarkana to Sherman, Tyler, Waco, Dallas and Fort Worth; and 5) the Frisco, which had a significant route network in Oklahoma and Missouri, and which had begun expanding aggressively into Texas, already as far south as Brownwood.

 
Above Left: This 1914 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Sherman has been annotated to show the five railroads serving Sherman. Tower 16 was located at the H&TC / T&P crossing in the city's center. West of the tower, the Katy crossed the T&P within the T&P's "yard limits", so no interlocker was necessary. The short green Cotton Belt line connecting to the purple Frisco line at the bottom of the map was a spur that allowed the Cotton Belt to reach its passenger station located along Frisco's tracks at the corner of East and Lamar (about where the number "26" appears on the map.) Above Right, Top: Tower 16 is shown as a "2" (two-story) "Signal Tower" on the 1914 Sanborn map. The tower was in the northwest corner of the crossing. Sherman's Union Station sat across the T&P tracks south of Tower 16. Above Right, Bottom: The
Whitewright Sun of July 15, 1943 reported the Railroad Commission's approval for the railroads to abandon Sherman Union Station. The station was demolished in 1944.


Above: This track chart (not drawn to scale) produced by the Office of the Chief Engineer of the Katy railroad has been annotated to highlight the railroads at Sherman as of June 1, 1915. The map shows the Katy tracks terminating in south Sherman, but by 1922, the Sanborn Fire Insurance map shows the tracks making a 90-degree turn to the west for a couple of blocks to serve the Sherman Manufacturing Co. The Tower 16 and Tower 186 crossings are indicated as black circles. Tower 16 had been operational since July, 1903 but the Tower 186 interlocker was in the distant future, installed in the early 1940s. Among the numerous grade crossings of railroads in Sherman, the Railroad Commission of Texas only required these two locations to be interlocked.

The reason the Cotton Belt depot ("St.L.S.W. Depot" in the above image) was located along the tracks of the Frisco ("St.L.S.F.&T.Ry." in the above image) was because the Cotton Belt preceded the Frisco by more than a decade. These were the Cotton Belt tracks originally. Steve Goen explains...

"The tracks in front of the Cotton Belt depot were originally all Cotton Belt but at the point in time that the Frisco reached Sherman some type of agreement was reached in which the Frisco got off the SP, passed thru town on this trackage and then split again south of town. I suspect that ownership of the trackage may have passed to the Frisco at this time. The Frisco used Union Station as well as did the T&P and the SP. The SP bowed out first, ending passenger service on December 15, 1935. Both the T&P and Frisco continued to use Union Station until 1944 when they moved out and it was torn down. The T&P rebuilt their freight depot into a combination passenger station at that time and it remained open until July 6, 1950 when the Texarkana - Bonham - Ft. Worth trains came off. As for the Frisco, they did like the T&P and added passenger areas to their freight depot downtown. They did the same at Denison when they moved out of the Katy depot and started using their own freight depot."

One of the largest route networks in Texas in the early 20th century belonged to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (AT&SF) Railway through its various Texas subsidiaries. Santa Fe never built tracks into Sherman, but they did serve Sherman for several years using rights negotiated with the Cotton Belt. Santa Fe's line from Dallas to Paris crossed the Cotton Belt in Wolfe City, less than 40 miles southeast of Sherman. (This crossing was never interlocked but it was eventually gated.) Santa Fe had made arrangements to use the Cotton Belt tracks from Wolfe City to Sherman at least at early as 1901. The 1901 edition of Poor's Manual of Railroads lists "Wolfe City to Sherman, Tex. (leased)" as a component of the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe (GC&SF) route network, while the 1908 Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Texas (RCT) lists "Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe, track of -- St. Louis Southwestern Railway of Texas, Wolfe City to Sherman" in a table of trackage rights. Both sources state the distance as 38.7 miles. Santa Fe's service to Sherman apparently did not last long. While the 1908 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Sherman shows a joint GC&SF / Cotton Belt depot, the 1914 map no longer includes the GC&SF.

  
Above Left: This image comes from a 1911 Santa Fe map that highlights all of GC&SF's routes in Texas including the Wolfe City - Sherman segment over Cotton Belt tracks (courtesy of Baylor University Digital Collections, hat tip Sam Myers.) Above Right: The 1908 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Sherman labels the Cotton Belt depot as a joint "GC&SF & St.LSW RR Passenger Depot". Note that the Frisco tracks are misidentified as "St. Louis & Santa Fe" instead of "St. Louis & San Francisco."

 Below: a March, 2023 Google Street View of the boarded up Cotton Belt depot in Sherman, current disposition unknown

In 1927, SP began consolidating its Texas and Louisiana railroad holdings by leasing them to its Texas & New Orleans (T&NO) subsidiary. In 1934, they were merged into the T&NO and the H&TC ceased to exist. On April 14, 1932, SP received approval from the Interstate Commerce Commission to exercise operational control over the Cotton Belt. SP allowed the Cotton Belt to continue to operate under its own name and the Cotton Belt was never leased by nor merged into the T&NO. The T&NO was dissolved by SP in 1961 and all of its assets were merged into SP. In 1992, the Cotton Belt was merged into SP.

From its initial construction into Denison c.1901, the Frisco used SP's tracks between Denison and Tower 16, and then switched onto the Frisco main line south of the tower to reach the depot and continue south to Carrolton (and from there to both Dallas and Fort Worth via Rock Island tracks through Irving.) At the depot, the Frisco main line was about 500 ft. west of the SP main line, but 1.7 miles farther south, the Frisco and SP tracks came very close, sharing a common right-of-way for about two miles. At the north end of this common right-of-way, a switch, Frisco Junction, was installed to allow Frisco trains to use SP's tracks. Frisco Employee Timetables (right top, September 1, 1963 and right bottom, August 9, 1964) narrow the timeframe in which Frisco Jct. was added. About 2.1 miles south of Frisco Jct., another switch was added to allow Frisco trains to reconnect to their main line to Carrollton. This switch became known as South Sherman Junction. The original Frisco main track between Frisco Jct. and South Sherman Jct. ran directly beside SP's tracks the entire distance and was abandoned.

Despite the sizable rail infrastructure in Sherman, only one major interlocker, Tower 16, was ever commissioned, authorized for operation on July 18, 1903. It was located in central Sherman where it protected the crossing of T&P's east / west line and H&TC's north / south line. Tower 16 was a standard SP design and was operated by SP personnel for most of its history. Through the end of 1930, RCT's Annual Reports included a table of active interlockers, and the first to include Tower 16 was dated December 31, 1903. It reported the interlocker as an electrical plant with 35 functions and 31 levers built by the Taylor Signal Company, with the H&TC and T&P listed as the railroads operating through Tower 16. The table published the following year added the Frisco, which continued to be listed until it was omitted from the table dated October 31, 1916. The Frisco was re-included beginning with the table dated December 31, 1923 and the listing remained unchanged through the end of 1930. That 1916 - 1923 timeframe overlaps with the period during which the Frisco was in receivership, which may have impacted the Frisco's operations at Tower 16.

Tower 16 continued to operate for nearly 100 years, but the rail landscape in the Sherman / Denison area changed significantly over that period. In 1925, Missouri Pacific (MP) acquired several Texas railroads and resumed operating in state for the first time since its Katy lease had been dissolved in 1891. By 1930, MP owned a large majority of T&P stock, but did not exercise executive control until 1976 when it acquired the remaining stock and absorbed the T&P's operations. In 1982, Union Pacific (UP) acquired MP, allowing MP to continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary. In 1988, UP bought the Katy and merged it into MP. Since MP had also merged the T&P, this gave UP sole ownership of the Joint Track. The Katy's route from Denison to Gainesville and Henrietta had been abandoned west of Whitesboro in 1970, and in 1992, UP abandoned its ex-T&P tracks between Sherman and Whitesboro. Though no longer the Joint Track, it continues to carry significant Denison - Fort Worth traffic for UP.


Above: This annotated Google Earth image shows the track arrangement in Whitesboro. The Katy and T&P did not cross in Whitesboro, hence there was never a numbered interlocker. Gould had directed the T&P to build the Sherman - Fort Worth line through Whitesboro simply to provide the Katy with a route to Fort Worth, which became the Joint Track. The proximity of the two railroads facilitated construction of a union depot.

Below: The TX 56 underpass beneath both railroads still shows their heralds: left, the Katy, southbound on TX 56, and right, the T&P, northbound on TX 56. Only the Katy line is still active. The bridge over the top is US 377. (Google Street View, May 2023)
 

East of Sherman, most of the T&P's northern route between Texarkana and Sherman has long been out of service or abandoned entirely. The line ceased to serve a through traffic purpose and it had limited on-line commerce with no major population centers. Tracks remain intact west from Texarkana to serve the Red River Army Depot near New Boston, but 38.5 miles of track between New Boston and Clarksville was abandoned in 1996. Twelve miles of track out of Sherman are used for a connection at Bells where a former Katy line from Denison to Greenville once passed through town. The Katy was abandoned north of Bells in 1988 and the junction was restructured to provide a continuous track between Sherman and Greenville. This track is now operated by a short line subsidiary of the Genesee & Wyoming (G&W) Railroad. The tracks east of Bells are generally intact to Bonham, but the line is out of service and only used for car storage to a limited extent. The Bonham - Paris segment was formally abandoned in 2003. The tracks mostly remain in place though they are generally buried in pavement at grade crossings and substantially overgrown elsewhere. A T&P track segment remains in use at Paris, which is still served from the north by a G&W short line out of Hugo, Oklahoma on former Frisco trackage.

In 1980, Burlington Northern (BN) acquired the Frisco and inherited rights on SP's line between Denison and South Sherman Junction. In the early 1990s, BN acquired this track segment from SP. SP departed the Sherman market entirely by also divesting its tracks south of South Sherman Junction to McKinney. They are now operated by a short-line subsidiary of G&W, but the line is severed south of McKinney. Since BN's acquisition included the tracks past Tower 16, BN replaced SP as the Tower 16 operator. BN subsequently merged with AT&SF to form Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) in 1996.

UP merged with SP in 1996 and soon thereafter integrated UP, SP and MP operations under the common UP banner. With the T&P abandoned west of Sherman and only limited operations east of Sherman to Bells by a G&W short line, Tower 16 had outlived its purpose and was retired on October 23, 2001. At the time, it controlled the BNSF line from the Red River bridge to South Sherman Junction. Since there was limited east/west traffic across the diamond, BNSF received approval from Federal regulators to retire the entire Tower 16 signal system under the condition that the diamond at Tower 16 be removed. To permit removal of the diamond, a new connector track was installed in the northwest quadrant of the crossing. This complemented the existing connector tracks in the northeast and southeast quadrants.

Myron Malone explains the activities surrounding the closure of Tower 16...

"For about 2 months prior to closure, signal and construction gangs had been working in the Sherman/Denison area to prepare for the closure. On October 23, 2001, a signal and construction crew started work at 8:00am. They first removed the diamond adjacent to the tower. Next they placed a new switch into position just north of the tower, activating the new connector track. A little after 9:00am, they knocked down signal Number 4, still showing red when it went down. Signal Number 3 was next. Both signals had to be removed to make room for the switch at the new connector track. The switch machines remotely controlled by Tower 16 were replaced by hand throw switches. About 11:00am, a contractor began the process of boarding up the tower. By 3:00pm, when the second trick operator arrived for work, the tower was closed."

Above Left: Tower 16 closed and boarded up late in the day of October 23, 2001 (Charles Allen photo) Above Center: Tower 16 had the fish-scale pattern between the lower and upper floors common to SP towers in Texas (e.g. Tower 17, Tower 21, Tower 26, etc.) (Jim King photo) Above Right: Tower 16, December 1981 (Myron Malone photo)

 

Above: These three photos were taken by Myron Malone on May 19, 1991.   Left: looking east toward Bonham    Center: looking northwest    Right: south side of the tower

 
Above Left: In this undated photo of Tower 16 from the collection of Mark Nerren, note the white rectangular "16" placard. This signage was common to virtually all manned interlocking towers in Texas, and it was likely mandated by RCT regulation. As numerous other Tower 16 photos show, it was not retained in later years. Above Right: This view of Tower 16 looks north c.1979 (John Treadgold collection.) Semaphores and block lights are present in both of these photos, and there is extensive foliage along the tracks and in the vicinity of the tower. Compare these photos with those above taken by Myron in 1991.

Above: three photos from the Don Harper collection  Left: view from the tower looking south  Center view of the tower looking north  Right: a friend of Don's at the crossing

 

 
Above Left: This c.1940 view of Tower 16 looks south with Sherman Union Station at right. The white "16" placard is barely visible on the north face of the tower below the windows. Union Station was razed in 1944. (City of Sherman photo) Above Right: In this 1958 aerial image of the Tower 16 crossing, the tower is visible only as a rectangular shadow in the northwest quadrant of the crossing. A debris field occupies the former site of Union Station in the southwest quadrant of the crossing.


Tower 16 Interior Photos by Larry Paul
 

 

Tower 16 was relocated to the town of Grapevine near the Cotton Belt depot that serves as the Grapevine Visitor's Center. To relocate the tower, it was sliced horizontally between the floors and moved in two sections. It was reassembled and repainted, and now sits in a parking lot adjacent to the tracks at 709 South Main St.

 
Above Left: This aerial view shows Tower 16 in a parking lot of the Grapevine Vintage Railroad located on the southwest corner of the Main St. crossing of the former Cotton Belt tracks. The Cotton Belt depot is visible north of the tracks. Above Right: Tower 16 captured by Google Street View, February, 2024

 

Tower 186

In the early 1940s, RCT commissioned a second interlocker south of downtown Sherman where a short spur track owned by SP crossed the Frisco's main line (see 1915 track chart above.) The interlocker was designated Tower 186 in RCT's numbering system. The precise nature of the interlocker is unknown, most likely a cabin interlocker or ground lever interlocker, definitely not a manned tower. The construction timeframe for this spur is undetermined, but it likely would have been after 1890 when the Katy built its Denison - Sherman line with plans to continue south to Dallas (but the Dallas extension never materialized.)

The SP spur appears on the 1914 Sanborn Fire Insurance map and is shown serving the Sherman Packing Co. slaughterhouse, a business also served by the Katy. The spur also connected to the Katy to facilitate movements from SP onto the Katy tracks northbound, and movements from the southbound Katy onto the SP spur. There were spur leads connecting to the SP main line in both directions, producing a triangle of tracks in which SP built a large fuel storage facility. Did the presence of the packing plant motivate the spur's construction or was the spur built simply to make a connection to the Katy, thereby creating a prime industrial site served by two railroads that the Sherman Packing Co. chose for its slaughterhouse? The answer remains to be found. The Frisco main line through south Sherman was built c.1902, but whether the spur already existed by then is undetermined. Its location was not covered on Sanborn maps prior to 1914.

Left: This excerpt from a 1951 Frisco employee timetable discusses the T&NO (SP) crossing in south Sherman at milepost 647 (in 2002, Tom Greco reported the same information in a 1947 timetable, and a 1955 timetable also lists the T&NO crossing at MP 647.) The use of fixed distant signals (effectively caution signs) to warn Frisco trains they were nearing a restricted speed crossing indicates that this was not an automatic interlocker. The restricted speed limit (15 mph) allowed time for Frisco trains to stop when they encountered a red home signal. A cabin or ground lever interlocker would be operated by SP trainmen to set the Frisco dwarf signals red before proceeding across the diamond. When the crossing was complete, the dwarf signals would be returned to their yellow condition. Unfortunately, SP timetable information about this spur and interlocker has not been found.

A Frisco Employee Timetable from 1963 no longer lists the T&NO crossing at MP 647. Thus, its retirement occurred in the 1955 - 1963 timeframe.

Left: This annotated 1922 Sanborn Fire Insurance map shows the Tower 186 crossing. A facility of the A. B. C. Candy Co. had replaced the Sherman Packing Co. The drawing notes that "Automatic Sprinklers" with "326 Grinnell heads" were in use at the factory.


Above: 1958 ((c)historicaerials.com)


Above
: March, 2023 (Google Earth)

 

 
Above Left: This 2023 Google Street View looks south from Park Ave., about 0.4 miles south of the site of Tower 186. The original Frisco main line is severed here and still in use for car storage. It connects to BNSF's main line -- originally the SP main line (at left) -- about 0.3 miles distant at the original Frisco Jct. Two miles farther south, the BNSF main line continues through South Sherman Junction (above right) where a switch now provides access to the former SP tracks toward McKinney. The BNSF main curves briefly to a due west heading before resuming its southwesterly trek to Carrolton.

 


 
Last Revised: 5/5/2024 JGK - Contact the Texas Interlocking Towers Page.