As noted above, the Texas Central
(TC) Railroad was represented at the second W&NW auction. The TC was an independent railroad but
closely related to the H&TC. It had been founded a year after Charles
Morgan's death when his son-in-law, H&TC President Charles Whitney, decided to
organize new investors and charter a separate
railroad to build the long planned northwest extension out of Ross rather than
risk placing the financial burden on the H&TC. The new company would also build a northeast extension
to Paris off the H&TC main line at Ennis, south
of Dallas. The assumption behind these
extensions was that upon completion, they would be acquired and merged by the
H&TC. The TC began building north and west out of Ross in 1879,
founding the eponymous towns of Whitney and Morgan in
succession as the TC built toward Eastland County
and Albany.
The TC went into receivership in 1885, and it was prevented
from participating in the first auction of the W&NW
in 1892 because its financial restructuring out of bankruptcy was still in progress. The
reorganization plan resulted in the TC's
main line from Ross to
Albany being deeded by the TC's bondholders to a new Texas Central Railroad Company in
January, 1893. The TC's northeastern
branch out of Ennis had built through Kaufman and
Terrell, but had yet to reach Greenville and
all work had been halted. As it had no operational relationship to the TC's main
line, it had been divested by the bankruptcy court and sold in 1892 to Wall Street
investor Hetty Green, who rechristened it the Texas Midland Railroad. (Perhaps the financial
task of resuming construction toward Paris was proving to be enough
for the Greens; after winning and then losing the first W&NW auction, they did not participate in the second.) Shorn of the
northeastern branch and on sound financial footing, the TC opened the bidding at the second
W&NW auction; it wanted direct
access to the other railroads at Waco rather than being limited to the W&NW
connection at Ross. But the TC did not win the auction, so, for the time being,
the W&NW at Ross remained their only south end connection.
The TC added
tracks from Albany to Stamford (1900), Stamford to Rotan (1907), and De Leon to
Cross Plains (1911.) The TC also built its own line from Ross to Waco in 1903. In 1910, the Katy (independent and no longer under lease to MP) acquired 90% of the stock of
the TC. They did not, however, take control of the company until May 1, 1914
when the TC was leased to the Katy's Texas-based subsidiary, a necessity for compliance with state law regarding railroad
headquarters in Texas. The Texas Central name continued to be used, but "the
Katy" came into common parlance along this line as operations continued for several decades.
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The TC's problem at the outset
was that its only south end connection was with the W&NW at Ross. To counter this, the TC built a 1.6 mile spur from Ross to
the Katy main line at a point three miles north of Elm Mott, as reported (left)
on Sept. 24, 1897 by Railway Age. The
H&TC
sued, but failed to stop it. [This ROW is probably Ross Rd. today.] No longer getting much business at Ross,
SP leased
their Ross - Waco line to the TC, as reported (right)
by
Railway and Engineering Review, August 5, 1899. The TC later
built its own line from Ross to Waco. |
 |
Having completed their line into Gatesville, the T&SL was conducting profitable operations in Texas,
but lacked the lengthy sidings and rolling stock necessary to run single-track rail
lines efficiently deep into Arkansas. The result was a receivership that began
in January, 1884. After two financial reorganizations spanning seven years
(during which the entire T&SL rail network was converted to standard gauge), the
enterprise was reconstituted in January, 1891 as the St. Louis Southwestern
Railway (SLSW, but also abbreviated "SSW" and more commonly known as the "Cotton Belt"). The Cotton Belt operated independently until 1932 when it became
controlled by SP. It continued to operate as a subsidiary of SP until it was
fully merged in 1992.
The major junction of
all of these railroads was located where the H&TC
line along the east bank of the Brazos crossed the Katy and Cotton Belt lines. This became the location of Tower 21 which was authorized by the
Railroad Commission of Texas (RCT) to commence operation
on August 8, 1903. The complexity of the junction is indicated by the fact that
Tower 21 opened as a 49-function electric interlocker with 44 levers, the most complex interlocker in
Texas at
the time (eclipsed by the 59 functions of Tower 26
several weeks later.) The interlocking plant was built by the Taylor Signal Co.
with a capacity of 56 levers. In its annual report, RCT listed all three
railroads as cost-sharing participants at
Tower 21.
In 1916, RCT
began listing the railroad responsible for operating each tower, and for Tower
21, it was the H&TC. This is no surprise; Tower 21 resembles many others that
were built by SP in this general timeframe (e.g. Towers 16, 17, and
81), and in most cases, the railroad that staffed
the tower was also the one that had built it. RCT's interlocker list dated
October 31, 1916 also showed an increase in Tower 21's functions to a total of
59. By the time RCT stopped publishing annual lists of active interlockers (the
last one was dated December 31, 1930), Tower 21's function count had increased
to 67. It was a very busy place!
Above: This index for the 1926 Sanborn Fire Insurance
Map collection for Waco has been rotated so that North is "up" and has been
annotated to highlight the rail lines and the river.
Besides the railroads discussed above, there are three
additions that appear on the map. The San Antonio & Aransas Pass
(SA&AP) had entered Waco from the southeast in the late 1880s and ended in
downtown near the river. Tower 59 was established
in November, 1904 where the SA&AP crossed the Katy, about 700 ft. south of
Katy's bridge. The International & Great Northern
(I&GN) was by 1926 a recently acquired subsidiary of MP. The I&GN had a lead into downtown
for passenger service coming from the east where it had tracks going north to
Ft. Worth (crossing the Cotton Belt in East Waco at
Tower 8) and southeast to Bryan and beyond. The third additional railroad,
the Texas Electric (TE), was an electric interurban line from Dallas to Waco via
Hillsboro. It had an interchange track with the Cotton Belt that ran down Price
St.
The maps shows that the H&TC (green) tracks
were still intact to Ross. Three years after this map was drawn, the H&TC would
abandon this line. Other than perhaps accessing East Waco businesses, it had
limited utility after the TC had laid its own tracks between Ross and Waco in
1903. The Katy had owned the TC for more than a dozen years by the time this map
was drawn, but the TC operated under its own name.
Below: Although the
commissioning of Tower 144 was still 13 years in the future, the junction it
would control had existed for decades when this 1915 track chart
(courtesy of Ed Chambers) was
drawn by the Katy's Chief Engineer's Office. The track complexities make it
apparent why Tower 21 had been commissioned with 44 active levers. Immediately
north of Tower 144, the Katy established a major yard
and shops at Bellmead. The "Cut-Off To T.C." at the top of
the image is not the TC spur between Ross and
Elm Mott. It was a shortcut between the TC and the Bellmead yard built after
the Katy had acquired the TC. It remains intact to serve an industry adjacent to
the former TC main line.
On May 29, 1928, RCT commissioned an interlocker, Tower
144, to control the crossing of the Katy and the Cotton Belt about a mile
northeast of Tower 21. This location was just beyond the south end of the Cotton
Belt yard, so Cotton Belt trains were generally traveling at low speed as they
approached Tower 144. This is likely the reason that RCT's list of active interlockers published at the end of
1928 shows the Tower 144 interlocker having only two functions! That's the smallest
number of functions ever incorporated into a numbered interlocker commissioned
by RCT. RCT describes the interlocking plant as "Mechanical" instead of
"M.-Cabin", which is how most of the others in that timeframe were listed, e.g.
Tower 143 at Devers,
Towers 145 and 149 at Edinburg, and several others. Cabin interlockers had
become common in the late 1920s as RCT appears to have pressured the
railroads to install safety systems at many of the remaining uncontrolled
crossings that could not justify the expense of a manned tower. Automatic
interlocker technology had not yet been approved by RCT, so cabin interlockers
were the best option. Tower 144's listing as "Mechanical" with only two functions
suggests that it was most likely a ground lever. It obviously couldn't have been
a manned tower, and it would have been listed as "M.-Cabin" if it had been
planned as a cabin interlocker. A ground lever interlocker was essentially a
manual switch located trackside that controlled signals instead of a track
switch. And since a single lever could control both of its functions, it is
likely that the lever simply altered the state of the signals on the Katy
tracks. The lever would normally be positioned to signal unrestricted movements
on the Katy tracks (by far the busier of the two) until a Cotton Belt train
needed to cross. All Cotton Belt trains stopped at the crossing; a crewmember would exit the train and throw the lever to the
opposite position to warn any approaching Katy train to stop. The lever would
then be returned to its normal position after the Cotton Belt train had
completed its passage over the diamond. Since the Cotton Belt yard was a short
distance north of Tower 144, its trains were always moving at low speed anyway,
hence the manual interlocker contributed only a minor delay to operations.
In 1965, SP
abandoned the original W&NW tracks between Marlin
and Bremond, and sold the remainder of this line, between Waco and Marlin, to MP.
MP's former I&GN line into Waco also passed through Marlin, but SP's route was
shorter and had fewer grades and curves. MP connected the tracks into their
(ex-I&GN) yard in East Waco, and the former SP tracks to Tower 21 were removed
around 1967. MP's route through Marlin remains in service by successor Union
Pacific (UP) as a major line between Waco and the Houston area. MP was already owned by UP when the
Katy was acquired and merged into MP's operations in 1989. The former Katy main
line through Waco between Ft. Worth and Smithville also remains a major route
for UP. The fate of Tower 21 has not been determined, but it was likely removed
from service in 1967 when the former SP tracks to the tower were abandoned.
Above: Carl Codney obtained this documentation from the
SP offices in Houston showing two sets of interlocker controls for Tower 21,
designated 21A (left) for the
T&NO and the Katy, and 21B (right)
for the Cotton Belt and the Katy. Unfortunately, the documents are undated, but
judging by the typeset and lack of hand notations typically found on these documents
(see Tower 2), they likely date from the 1950s. The significant
number of "Trk. Cir." (track circuits) suggests that the Tower 21 interlocker
had become automatic and it may have
included the functions previously assigned to the Tower 144 interlocker.
Below: SP continued to serve
Waco over the Cotton Belt until 1988 when the line was abandoned
west of Corsicana. The Cotton Belt bridge over the
Brazos remains intact and is the subject of ongoing debate among Waco civic
leaders regarding whether to repurpose it as a pedestrian walkway or dismantle
it. (Waco Tribune-Herald photos)
Above: These 1954 photos of
Tower 21 (by Harry C. Blaize Jr., from the collection of John Linda) were taken from a train carrying
model railroaders from the Katy's Waco depot to the Bellmead Shops.
Above Left: Facing north, a
highway now resides atop the former H&TC and TC rights-of-way near the
site of Tower 21. Above Right:
This view of a northbound Katy train coming off the Brazos River bridge was
probably taken from the highway overpass, near the site of Tower 21. (courtesy Tom
Kline) Below Left:
This Google Street View image facing east shows evidence of the original
parallel W&NW and TC grades from Ross into Waco. Below:
The Cotton Belt tracks remain buried on University Parks Dr. in this Street View image
from November 2016, with the Cotton Belt bridge visible in the distance.
Above Left: Tom Kline captured
this image of the Tower 144 crossing site in 2007. Facing north along the Katy, the
Cotton Belt tracks still came in from the northeast but were out of service and
no longer crossed. Tom has documentation showing that around 1957, the Cotton Belt began
merging here onto the Katy main line to Tower 21, where they reconnected back to
their bridge tracks. The rails
west of Tower 144 became industry tracks.
Above Right: In this view to the south, concrete pads remained intact from earlier signal
posts. The Cotton Belt ROW went through the tree line to the right of the Katy
tracks. Below Left:
By March 2013, Google Street View shows that the Cotton Belt tracks had been
scrapped. Some sort of electronics box remained intact, and is visible in Tom's
photo above right. Below Right:
There's not much evidence of the former Tower 144 crossing, which now sits
beneath a US 77 Bus. overpass. Both Cottonbelt St. and Katy Lane
are nearby. (Google Earth)
As annotated onto the
Sanborn Map further above, there was one other
railroad through East Waco, an electric interurban line built originally by the
Southern Traction Co. that was completed into Waco in 1913. The Texas Electric (TE)
Railway was then chartered in 1916 to merge the Southern Traction Co. and the
Texas Traction Co., creating a network of three interurban routes out of Dallas
that ran to Waco, Corsicana and Sherman, respectively. The TE line from Dallas
to Waco went by way of Italy and
Hillsboro. At Waco, the
interurban had an interchange track with the Cotton Belt railroad on Price St. and then
continued south to cross the Brazos River into downtown on a 3-pier rail bridge
(above left, looking north,
courtesy Baylor University Library.) The bridge was located about 350 yards
upstream of the Cotton Belt bridge. The TE terminated its operations at the end
of 1948 and the interurban bridge was re-decked to carry automobiles. The
opening of the Franklin Ave. bridge in 1973 motivated the decision to dismantle
the interurban bridge. This began in the summer of 1974 and was completed in
September, 1975, but the bridge's three piers were left undisturbed in the
river. The northernmost pier has been painted and repurposed (above
right) to hold a circular observation deck. (Google Street View,
November, 2021.) Below: The
two piers that remain in the river along with the circular observation deck
built atop the northernmost pier sit adjacent to the
Waco Suspension Bridge. (Google Earth, October 30, 2019)
Thanks to Andy Nold, John
Linda and Johnny Myers for information about the interurban line into Waco.
