Texas Railroad History - Tower 34 - Taylor
A Crossing of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas
Railway and the International & Great Northern Railroad
Above: Railroad
executive John W. Barriger III snapped this photo of Tower 34 from the rear
platform of his business car sometime in the 1930s. Barriger was facing north as
his train headed south on tracks of the Missouri - Kansas - Texas ("Katy")
Railroad. Moments before, Barriger's car had crossed over the diamond at the
Katy's intersection with the International - Great Northern (I-GN) Railroad that
went east / west through Taylor. The Katy's passenger depot is visible to the
left of the tracks. From this angle, the front dormer aligns with the depot's
far wall to present the illusion of another building beyond the depot. The Katy freight
depot is just off the left edge of the image, reached by a spur, with an
exchange track behind it.
Below:
On a different trip eastbound on the I-GN, Barriger took this photo looking
west toward downtown Taylor with the tower sitting in the northeast quadrant of the diamond.
To the immediate right of the tower, the large, light-colored I-GN passenger
depot looms in the background, vaguely discernable behind numerous signal and
utility poles. The south end of the Katy passenger depot is visible trackside to
the right, and the
Katy freight depot sits to the left behind it, partially obscuring a cooling tower and
smokestack of the
Southland Ice Company long before it morphed into the convenience store
giant of 7-Eleven fame. (photos courtesy John
W Barriger III National Railroad Library)
The International & Great Northern (I&GN) Railroad was the
combination of two unaffiliated companies, the International Railroad and
the Houston & Great Northern (H&GN) Railroad. The earliest to be
chartered was the
H&GN founded in 1866 by Houston interests with a plan to build
north to the Red River. Construction was delayed for several years;
major New York banks were reluctant to lend money to Texas
railroads during the initial Reconstruction period after the Civil War.
Work finally began in Houston in December, 1870. In May, 1873 when the H&GN's
track gang reached Palestine 151 miles north of
Houston, it
marked the third construction team to enter the town in less than a year!
The
other two had been crews of the International Railroad arriving into Palestine from
opposite directions.
The International had been chartered in 1870 to build a line from Texarkana
to the southern border at Laredo
via Austin and San Antonio.
It was viewed by its founders as a means of providing an international extension
for two railroads that were building across Missouri and Arkansas to produce a
line between St. Louis and Texarkana. Those two railroads would merge in 1874 to
form the
St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern (SLIM&S) Railway.
The International's construction had commenced in 1871 at two locations, northeast
from Hearne
and southwest from Longview. A friendly connection with the Texas & Pacific
(T&P) Railway at Longview filled the gap from there to
Texarkana.
Well before the H&GN reached Palestine, management of the
International recognized the value in a combined railroad that would add
Houston (and favorable connections to Galveston) to the International's
service points. An agreement was established to merge the
two companies to become the International and Great Northern Railroad (I&GN)
Railroad. In December, 1872, the railroads began operating under a combined
management structure led by a veteran railroad executive with a lengthy resume, Herbert Melville "Hub" Hoxie,
who served as General
Superintendent of both railroads. The International's offices were moved from
Hearne to Houston to make it more convenient for Hoxie to run both railroads while awaiting
permission from the Legislature to merge.
Having completed its line from
Longview to Hearne, the International resumed construction from Hearne toward
Austin. A sale of town lots at Rockdale was held on
September 3, 1873, several months before the rails reached town on
January 28, 1874. Construction was halted at Rockdale for more
than two years as politicians and journalists debated the issue of railroad
subsidies which had suddenly engulfed the International and its management.
The
International had submitted a claim for construction
bonds to be issued by the State in accordance with the
railroad's charter. Claiming corruption, the Texas
Comptroller refused to countersign and register the bonds despite
the State Engineer's report that the work covered by the bonds was of
high quality and met the requirements of the railroad's charter. As
legal proceedings moved slowly, a lengthy debate raged
statewide for more than two years. Much ink was spilled as
to whether the bond issuance was in accordance with state law and
whether the state law was proper under the Texas Constitution, or was the whole
affair simply a demand by the International for an unlawful subsidy?
Legislators are usually responsive to
their constituents, and those constituents wanted railroads
now. This was certainly true in Austin,
which only had one rail line (to Houston), and it was definitely true in San
Antonio, which had no railroads at all. A compromise was ultimately found, and
the I&GN charter was granted by state law in 1875. By then, the I&GN name had
been appearing in newspapers for a couple of years even though it was a
corporate mirage whose operations were conducted by two separate railroads. It was not uncommon to see all three
names -- the International, the H&GN and the I&GN -- mentioned in a
single newspaper on the same day. The bona fide I&GN resumed building out of Rockdale toward
Austin on May 22, 1876.
Above Left and Left Center:
I&GN rails
reached Taylor in late June. Anticipating its arrival, the sale of town lots at
Taylor was scheduled for June 1 and was announced in the
Galveston Daily News of May 16, 1876.
Above Right Center: The
results of the sale were reported beneath a "Williamson County" subhead in the
"State News" column of the Galveston Daily News
of June 8, 1876. Note that the paragraph uses two different names for
the town: Taylor Station and Taylor. This would become a common theme.
Above Right: The Denison Daily News of June
24, 1876 noted that the "railroad reached Taylor Friday", which was the
prior day, June 23.
 |
The town of Taylor was named for
Moses Taylor, a New
York banker and one of the wealthiest men in the U.S. He was a major investor in
both the H&GN and the International, and through them became the leader of a
financial syndicate backing the I&GN. Both Taylor and
Taylor Station were names initially used for the town, but
Taylorsville was ultimately adopted. Texas' largest newspaper, the Galveston
Daily News, began using Taylorsville
in March, 1877, yet Taylor continued to be referenced in
newspapers across the state. Whether this widespread usage contributed
to the decision to shorten the town's
official name to Taylor is undetermined. The change reportedly
occurred in 1892, but postal
records pertaining to the revision have not been found in the
National Archives.
Left: A column editor
for the
Brenham Daily Banner of July 7,
1877 cleverly noted that the recent establishment of the Taylorsville Reflector
as the fourth newspaper in Williamson County fit perfectly with the
Georgetown Sun
and the Round Rock Headlight
to ensure that "Williamson county should be
well lighted." ... presumably helping to illuminate the county scene
for the fourth Williamson County newspaper: the
Georgetown Watchman.
Six
months after the tracks entered Taylor, they reached Austin on December 16,
1876. The I&GN did not
continue onward to San Antonio because the construction from Hearne to Austin
coupled with the lengthy delay at Rockdale had stretched the company's finances
to the breaking point. It badly needed operating revenue with which to
pay expenses. On April 1, 1878, the company was forced
into receivership. After a year and a half in bankruptcy, it was sold at
foreclosure on November 1, 1879 to buyers who formed a new I&GN company
under the original charter and management team. The I&GN restarted
construction south from Austin in June, 1880. Routing
via San Marcos and
New Braunfels, the tracks reached San Antonio on February 16, 1881,
and were extended to Laredo later that year. |
The 1872 announcement of the plan to create the I&GN
had immediately caught the attention of notorious rail magnate Jay Gould. Gould
had been planning to expand his east coast empire into the Midwest and Texas. To
maximize the potential of the Midwest railroads he intended to acquire, Gould
needed his own outlet to Mexico and his own access to ports on the Gulf. Gould viewed
the I&GN merger with alarm; it would have operations from Longview
to Houston and Mexico, and planned to serve Galveston and San Antonio, the two
largest cities in Texas. An existing connection at Houston to the Port of Galveston would make the I&GN a powerful
competitor in the export business. Gould began to develop a long term plan to capture it. He focused
on ways to control rail lines at Texarkana which he recognized as the I&GN's
choke point for Midwest traffic.
Gould
decided that the Missouri, Kansas & Texas (MK&T, "Katy") Railway
would be a valuable property to support
his quest since it would give him control of the only alternative Midwest
gateway in Texas. The Katy's new bridge over the Red
River had opened in late 1872, leading north to the Katy's rail network in Kansas and Missouri,
and south into the
new town of
Denison where tracks of the Houston &
Texas Central (H&TC) Railway had recently arrived providing connections to
Dallas, Houston and Galveston. Gould would normally buy a majority interest in a
railroad he wanted to control, but this was infeasible because the Katy's stock was terribly
diluted. Poor market circulation and the lack of large private blocks for sale
made it impossible to simply buy a controlling interest. In a story of corporate intrigue worthy of a movie
script, Gould developed a plan to
infiltrate Katy management with his loyalists over a period of several years. In late 1879 through the efforts of his
henchmen, Gould was named President of the Katy though he had negligible
ownership of Katy stock.
A year later in December, 1880, Gould leased the Katy to the
Missouri Pacific (MP) Railroad, a
major St. Louis-based enterprise in which he had obtained a large
ownership position in 1879. Gould directed MP to extend the Katy's tracks south from the Red River
bridge to
Fort Worth, then farther south to
Waco
where the first construction train crossed a new Brazos River bridge
in late December, 1881. The plan was to continue south and then turn
east to Houston. To the public, this was
an MP operation even though for legal reasons, the title to
MP's new tracks in Texas was assigned to the Katy. Neither the Katy nor MP had
obtained a Texas
railroad charter, but a Texas law passed in 1870 had given the Katy
permission to build into Texas over the planned Red River bridge. The
law also allowed the Katy to build "...in the general direction of
Waco and Austin, to the Rio Grande..." under its Kansas charter.
The Katy lacked a Texas headquarters (a requirement added to the Texas
Constitution in 1876) but Gould was unfazed. He considered the 1870 law
all that he needed to authorize building Katy tracks (under lease to MP)
all the way to the Rio Grande. Everyone wanted more railroads.
MP (Katy) continued building south from Waco toward
Temple and Taylor.
Right:
Dallas Daily Herald, February
2, 1882, one of the rare newspaper reports crediting the track
construction to the Katy |
 |
To capture the I&GN, Gould needed control of the
Texarkana gateway and thus,
the T&P and the SLIM&S. The T&P provided the I&GN's critical link between
Longview and Texarkana, and the SLIM&S owned the Texarkana - St. Louis tracks.
An opportunity to acquire the T&P arose because it had become stalled at Fort
Worth, unable to finance construction to El Paso.
Gould established a syndicate to purchase the stock of T&P President Thomas
Scott for $3.5 million. He then offered to build the T&P west from Fort Worth
at his expense in
exchange for $40,000 in T&P stocks and bonds for each mile completed. A deal was
struck and track-laying began in April, 1880. Gould was effectively in command
of the T&P, and by April, 1881, he owned controlling interest
and was named President. After Gould bought 30% of the SLIM&S' stock in
December, 1880, its management capitulated and agreed to lease the railroad to
MP. Gould was in control of the Texarkana gateway ...
... except for new
competition from the Texas & St. Louis (T&SL) Railway which
owned tracks from Athens to
Texarkana by the end of 1880. In January, 1881, it adopted the slogan The Cotton Belt Route
by which it (and two bankruptcy successors) would by known for the next 110 years.
Although it eventually built across Arkansas and into Missouri, those tracks did
not exist in 1881. It was in no position to help the I&GN resist Gould.
Around the time I&GN tracks were reaching San Antonio in February, 1881, Gould
began negotiations with I&GN management to buy it. He had successfully "hemmed
in" the I&GN by acquiring control of the I&GN's route between St. Louis and
Longview. He also controlled the Red River bridge at Denison, the only other Midwest
gateway in Texas. On June 1, 1881, it was announced that Gould had acquired all
of the I&GN common stock in a one-for-two swap for Katy stock. Gould became
President of the I&GN and leased it to the Katy for 99 years. Gould
immediately proceeded with I&GN construction south from San Antonio, reaching
Laredo in mid December, 1881.
Why would
Gould lease the I&GN to the Katy? Didn't the Katy own the I&GN?
Although Gould had used Katy stock to acquire the I&GN, he had obscured the
actual ownership by secretly placing the acquired I&GN stock certificates for
safekeeping with his friend in Fort Worth, General Grenville M. Dodge (Chief
Engineer of the T&P, known most famously as the Chief Engineer for the eastern
part of the Transcontinental Railroad.) Gould was concerned that
because the parent Katy corporation was based in Kansas and did not have a Texas
headquarters, its direct ownership of the I&GN might violate Texas law. If
challenged, Gould could claim the I&GN was based in Fort Worth, owned by Gen.
Dodge! The I&GN continued operating under its own name -- it was well known by
the public but this also helped to present the facade that the I&GN was not
owned by another railroad. For Gould, the
less said about this topic, the better.
 |
In early 1882, MP (Katy) construction
progressed toward Taylor where an I&GN connection would open another
Gould-only route from the Midwest to Laredo via Denison. The equivalent
route via Texarkana and Longview was already in operation.
Left:
Gould planned a shared division headquarters for MP (Katy) and the
I&GN at Taylor. (Galveston Daily News,
March 3, 1882)
Right:
MP (Katy) reached Taylor on May 1, 1882 and connected with the I&GN.
The route went south along the east side of town and reached the I&GN
tracks southeast of downtown. (Waco
Daily Examiner, May 3, 1882) |
 |
With MP (Katy) headed for Houston, Gould turned his focus to expanding
his enterprise there. Five months after MP (Katy)
reached Taylor, Gould bought the Galveston, Houston & Henderson (GH&H) Railroad.
At the time, it owned the only tracks between Houston and Galveston. Gould
assigned the GH&H ownership to the Katy which then leased it to the I&GN (so...
the I&GN, under lease by the Katy, now had a lease on a railroad owned by
the Katy; how did the accountants keep track of all of this?) The I&GN was
the sole Gould railroad to benefit directly from the GH&H purchase because it
already served Houston whereas MP's progress toward Houston had become stalled at Taylor.
Gould had stopped MP (Katy) track construction due to the
political climate in the Texas Legislature which had repealed the land grant law
and lowered authorized passenger fares while pondering other regulations. He
still wanted to extend the MP (Katy) tracks to Houston, but the urgency was
reduced now that he had a Houston presence with the I&GN. More significantly, capturing the I&GN
had provided Gould with
an easy opportunity to create an alternate route from Denison to Houston,
accomplishing the goal of the entire MP (Katy) route in less than a month!
The I&GN had projected a line to Denison long before Gould entered the
picture. The I&GN merger proposal in December, 1872 had occurred about the same
time that the Katy's Red River bridge had opened and tracks of the H&TC were
reaching Denison. I&GN management immediately spotted a business opportunity -- divert
Katy
traffic away from the H&TC by sending it to and from
Houston via the H&GN main line at Palestine (which was still a few months from
completion.) The idea took on such urgency that in early 1873, the H&GN began building a branch line toward Denison
from a departure point on the International's
main line 36 miles southwest of Longview, now the town of Troup. (Why
this work was done by the H&GN instead of the International is undetermined;
presumably the International's construction forces had all been deployed
to Hearne to resume building southwest.) The branch point was selected because it provided the shortest distance to
Tyler, an important east Texas town that had no
railroad service. Beyond Tyler, construction continued toward Denison, reaching the T&P east /
west main line in the summer of 1873 where a new town, Mineola, was founded. The delays getting the I&GN merger approved stunted further progress on
this branch; the I&GN never extended its tracks beyond Mineola.
Six
years later, Gould liked the idea of providing an
alternative to the H&TC at Denison. The Denison and Southeastern (D&S)
Railway had already laid tracks southeast from Denison, ostensibly building
to Greenville to connect with the East Line & Red River (EL&RR) Railroad
to Jefferson (a railroad Gould would buy in 1881
and sell to the Katy that November.) The tracks from Denison were only in place
as far as
Whitewright and the line was operated with Katy
trains. After Gould became Katy President in December, 1879, the investors
resumed building the D&S to
Greenville. The tacit understanding was that the Katy
would buy the D&S (perhaps not so tacit; the investors changed the name to
Missouri, Kansas & Texas Extension Railway!)
Coincidentally (or
perhaps not, given Gould's connections in the investor community and his
brilliance in seeing route combinations before anyone else) the line from Denison to Greenville was in the direction of Mineola. Gould
instructed the Katy to build the remaining 51 miles from Greenville to Mineola, closing the gap on a
"Gould all the way" route to Houston while creating new
interchange options with the T&P. The tracks into Mineola were
completed in late June, 1881, less than a month after Gould had formally
acquired the I&GN. In November, 1881, the Katy formally acquired the Denison - Greenville tracks. When MP's progress stalled at Taylor in the
summer of 1882, Gould was under no pressure to resume building; he already had a
viable route between Houston and Denison.
Right: Austin
Weekly Statesman, March 19, 1885
In 1886, Gould
interests chartered a new
railroad, the Bastrop & Taylor Railway, to resume building out of
Taylor. Work commenced in 1887 under a revised name, the Taylor, Bastrop &
Houston (TB&H) Railway which was soon sold to the Katy. It built south to cross Southern Pacific
(SP) rails at
Elgin (the article's Huntington reference is to C. P. Huntington,
SP's Chairman.) The route continued south to Bastrop, crossed the
Colorado River, and turned east at Smithville toward West Point,
La Grange and Houston. Eleven miles east of La Grange, construction stopped in late 1887 at Boggy Tank as the Gould railroads entered a period of
financial turmoil. |
 |
 |
In Texas, Gould's
immediate problem was the election of James S. "Jim" Hogg in November,
1886 as Texas Attorney General. The focus of Hogg's campaign had been his claim
that Texas railroads were guilty of poor service, poor facilities, price-fixing
and other violations of their charters and other state laws. Hogg
began filing lawsuits against various railroads including the I&GN and the Katy.
Gould had allowed the I&GN to deteriorate, leading to poor service and
routine accidents, and he got away with it because most travelers
had no other choice. Railroad charters
required companies to maintain good facilities and good service, so Hogg
wasted no time going after the Katy and the I&GN.
Right:
Galveston Evening Tribune, May 10,
1888
In addition to his problems with Hogg, Katy stockholders wanted to fire Gould
for siphoning Katy profits into MP, but they found it difficult to
summon a quorum for a
special meeting. Gould tried to prevent the meeting by
resorting to judicial intervention, but the stockholders prevailed in
May, 1888. They fired Gould for malfeasance associated with the terms of
MP's lease and then promptly sought bankruptcy protection and a
declaration that MP's lease was void. |
 |
The
Katy would continue to operate in Texas under a Receiver appointed by the court
until the lease litigation was settled. Though Katy stockholders had fired Gould,
he remained President of the I&GN, leased by (and secretly owned by) the Katy!
Using a clever legal ploy,
Gould was able to put the I&GN into bankruptcy before Katy management could
fire him. This bought Gould time to figure out a strategy for retaining the I&GN
in his portfolio. During the Katy bankruptcy litigation, its ownership of the I&GN
was revealed. This prompted Gould to meet privately with Hogg to point
out that this ownership was illegal since the Katy lacked a Texas headquarters.
The precise ownership of the I&GN had long been finessed by Gould. Hogg had
suspected the Katy owned it, but couldn't prove it. He now had the evidence he
needed.
Hogg sought and obtained a court injunction to prevent Katy
management from exercising any control when the I&GN bankruptcy ended. In
the Katy bankruptcy litigation, the Texas Supreme Court affirmed a lower court's
termination of MP's lease while also formally declaring the Katy to be a
"foreign" railroad because it lacked a Texas charter and a Texas headquarters.
The Katy would remain under court supervision until a bona fide Texas railroad
charter was passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor. Hogg
lobbied the Legislature to omit the I&GN from the new Katy charter law,
which was passed by the Legislature on October 28, 1891. It granted
rights to a newly created Texas subsidiary of the parent Katy corporation, to be
known as the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Co. of Texas (but still
just "the Katy".) The
subsidiary would be headquartered in Denison and would own most of the Katy's
current Texas rail lines, but not the I&GN (and not the EL&RR, which was in
separate receivership litigation.)
Gould's delaying tactics and Hogg's
lobbying had provided time for the Legislature to sour on the idea of allowing
the Katy to own Texas' largest railroad. The Katy had little
choice but to sell the I&GN back to Gould for a paltry sum -- no
railroad wanted to risk Gould's ire since he strongly influenced the I&GN's fate
with his control of the T&P and MP through Texarkana. The Katy's new Texas
railroad charter was signed into law by ... Governor Jim Hogg! He had been
elected governor in November, 1890 under a
campaign to establish a Railroad Commission of Texas (RCT) to regulate
the industry in Texas.
After the sale, Gould owned the I&GN and he
continued to control the T&P and MP, but the MP no longer had any assets -- leased or owned --
in Texas. MP exchanged traffic with the T&P at Texarkana, and the three railroads cooperated on passenger trains between St. Louis and
Houston via Texarkana and Longview. Unfortunately, Gould did not have much time to navigate this new
reality; he died in New York in December, 1892. His son George replaced him as
the President of MP, the T&P and the I&GN.
As for Jim Hogg ... he
had spent key periods of his public life working to force the I&GN to improve its service and
safety record, but unfortunately, he learned the hard way that his efforts were
insufficient. In January, 1905, long after he had left office, Hogg suffered a
head injury when the I&GN train he was riding to Houston collided with a string
of freight cars. Though he believed his injury was minor, he ultimately needed
multiple surgeries over the next year to relieve brain swelling, and he
eventually succumbed to his injury in March, 1906.
Right:
In addition to the I&GN and Katy in Central Texas, three other railroads operated in the area.
Southern Pacific (SP)
The I&GN chose Hearne
as the starting point to build northeasterly because materials could be
shipped there on the H&TC main line which went from Houston to Denison.
There was also a branch line to Austin from Hempstead. SP gained control
of the H&TC in 1883.
Northwest from Austin, a narrow gauge line was built by the Austin & North
Western in 1882. Reorganized as the Austin & Northwestern in 1888,
it was acquired by SP in 1891 and promptly converted to standard
gauge. It crossed the I&GN at
McNeil and terminated at Llano, 82 rail
miles farther west.
East of Austin, the Katy's 1887 extension south from Taylor crossed SP's
tracks at Elgin.
In 1901-02, the I&GN would build a line between Fort Worth and the
northern outskirts of Houston. It passed very close to Hearne, helping the town
become one of the major rail junctions in Texas. Hearne
would become even more important when SP built the "DalSa Cutoff"
between Giddings and Hearne in 1914.
Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe (GC&SF)
The GC&SF main line out of Galveston crossed the I&GN
at Milano and reached Temple in 1881.
Within a year, MP crossed the GC&SF at Temple as it built Katy tracks
toward Taylor. In 1887, the GC&SF became part of the much larger
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway.
San
Antonio & Aransas Pass (SA&AP)
The SA&AP began with construction of a
main line between San Antonio and
Corpus Christi in 1884. A lengthy branch
from Yoakum to Waco was completed in 1891.
It crossed the Katy at
West Point, the SP at Giddings, the I&GN at Rockdale, and the GC&SF at
Cameron. SP acquired the SA&AP legally in 1925,
but there had been an unofficial (and at times,
illegal) relationship dating to 1892. |
 |
Independent of MP under a new charter, the Katy resumed
construction in 1892, building from Boggy Tank to the Brazos River, seven miles
east of Sealy. The remaining 42 miles from
the Brazos River to Houston was completed the following year. With tracks into
Houston, the Katy wanted to operate its own trains to Galveston, but the GH&H was still leased
to the I&GN which the Katy no longer owned. The Katy claimed in a Federal
lawsuit that it had a continuing right to operate over the GH&H. A settlement
was negotiated by George Gould in which the I&GN and the Katy each owned 50% of the GH&H
with unlimited rights to operate over it.
 |
Left: The
Austin Statesman of January 22,
1904 carried this news item regarding the construction of an
interlocking tower at Taylor.
Pursuant to new a state law in 1901, RCT began
regulating safety at crossings of two or more railroads. The plan was to
have railroads deploy interlocking plant technology, widely used
in other states, subject to RCT authorization and inspection. RCT commissioned
Tower 34 at Taylor on March 5, 1904 with a 28-function mechanical
interlocking plant built by Union Switch & Signal. This was more than
double the typical minimum plant size indicating that signals, derails and switches for connecting tracks were controlled through the
interlocker.
Right: Only two months later on May 9, the
Austin Statesman reported that
heavy rains had damaged the tower at Taylor. |
 |
Since the I&GN / Katy crossing at Taylor existed prior
to 1901, RCT rules specified that the capital expense for the tower and
interlocking plant would be shared equally by the railroads. The recurring
expense for tower operations and maintenance (O&M) would be split based on the ratio
of interlocking functions assigned to each railroad compared to the total
function count. One railroad would take the lead for staffing the tower, billing the other railroad periodically
for its share of recurring expenses (e.g. labor, utilities and materials.) In 1916, RCT
began reporting which railroad had O&M responsibilities at each tower;
for Tower 34, it was the Katy.
Whether the Katy had been tasked with this
responsibility at the initial commissioning of the tower is unknown. In most
cases, the railroad that took O&M responsibility was the railroad that had managed the design
and construction of the tower, but the architecture of Tower 34 does not
resemble the typical Katy tower design. It is unlikely that the Katy altered its basic tower architecture after Tower 34
because Tower 53 -- a typical Katy concrete tower -- opened only four
months later. Tower 34's design and construction was probably led by the I&GN, and it
seems likely that the O&M responsibility was transferred to the
Katy during the I&GN's bankruptcies in the 1907 - 1914 timeframe. Unfortunately, there are
insufficient photos of known I&GN towers to provide confirming clues for
Tower 34's design heritage. Historic aerial imagery shows
that Tower 34 was removed sometime between 1958 and 1963. The fate of the
structure is undetermined.
The Katy entered bankruptcy in 1915 and was operated
by a Receiver under court supervision until 1923. During that period, the
railroad came under the control of the U. S. Railroad Administration (USRA)
exercising powers granted by Congress in response to World War I in
Europe. The post-war Transportation Act of 1920 terminated USRA's management of
the railroads and returned them to private ownership. It also granted
substantial control over the railroads to the Interstate Commerce Commission
(ICC). When the Katy's
receivership ended in 1923, it had a new corporate name: the Missouri - Kansas - Texas
(MKT) Railway
(but it was still "the Katy".)
Under George Gould, things did not go smoothly
for the I&GN. It continued to have a disproportionate number of accidents,
particularly on its poorly constructed, poorly signaled main line between
Fort Worth and Houston that opened in
1902. It was under constant orders from RCT to correct problems and
improve service, including a requirement to procure additional locomotives and passenger
cars. When the nation went into a depression caused by the
Panic of
1907, the I&GN was unable to make
bond payments and it went into voluntary receivership in February, 1908. To add
to the misery, the I&GN shops and roundhouse at Taylor were destroyed by fire
that same year.
Above:
The
Railway & Engineering Review, September 26, 1908 |
Right: Southern Machinery,
February, 1910 -- the "large dam" created Railroad Lake, a.k.a. Allison
Lake east of downtown |
 |
The
I&GN receivership lasted three years under the appointed Receiver, Judge Thomas Freeman, a former
T&P attorney. Freeman rehabilitated much of the I&GN's roadbed and its signaling systems
using $11 million in short term Receiver Certificates authorized for sale by the
Court. In June, 1911, the Gould family bought the I&GN out of bankruptcy and
named Judge Freeman to be the new President. Yet, revenues were insufficient to
retire the short term notes issued during the receivership, so the
I&GN went back into bankruptcy in 1914. At that point, the Gould family
connection to the I&GN ended forever. It was not until July 28, 1922 that the
I&GN emerged from bankruptcy as a newly reorganized company under the name
International - Great Northern Railroad, hence both "I&GN"
and "I-GN"
are used as abbreviations.
As for MP, the Gould family was no longer involved after a financial
reorganization in 1917. In 1924, MP tried to buy the newly independent I-GN as a
means of reentering the Texas market but the ICC refused to approve the sale. To
keep the I-GN away from other competitors, MP helped the New Orleans, Texas &
Mexico (NOT&M) Railway buy the I-GN. That sale was approved by the ICC in June, 1924.
Six months later, MP was allowed to buy the
entire NOT&M on January 1, 1925. This gave it the target I-GN plus the NOT&M's
network of smaller railroads along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana that
operated under the marketing umbrella Gulf
Coast Lines. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of MP, I-GN continued using its
name. When MP emerged from a lengthy bankruptcy (1933 - 1956) the reorganization
eliminated the I-GN subsidiary and it became fully integrated into MP.
 |
Left:
This image snippet from the 1931 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Taylor
shows the tower located in the northeast quadrant of the diamond. The
track south of the I-GN main line is an industry spur that
connected to the I-GN off the map to the west. The Katy passenger station
was trackside a hundred yards north of the diamond while the I-GN passenger station was on the north side of the tracks about 500
yards west of the diamond (off the map.) RCT frequently issued orders requiring
railroads to build joint stations to support passenger connecting
traffic. No record of such an order for Taylor has been found nor has
any evidence surfaced of a Taylor "union depot".
Below: This magnification of the Sanborn Map shows that
the tower's staircase was on the east side of the building, consistent
with both photos at the top of the page.
 |
A July, 1958, Katy employee timetable (ETT) lists the
Taylor crossing as an automatic interlocker; a March, 1957 Katy ETT does not.
Tower 34 was no longer operated manually at some point in this timeframe, but
the building might not have been removed immediately. It does not appear on 1963
aerial imagery, and its disposition is undetermined.
By 1930, MP had acquired a majority of
T&P stock but did not exercise control. The T&P continued to operate independently but cooperatively with MP
(as it had since the Gould days) until
it was merged into MP in 1976. MP was acquired by Union Pacific (UP) in 1982 but kept
its separate identity. The Katy remained independent until 1988 when it was acquired
by UP and merged into MP, one hundred years after MP's lease of the Katy had been
terminated by the Texas courts. Several years later, UP merged with SP
and the entire railroad now operates under the UP name.
MKT / MP, Taylor, Texas, 1965
Track crew puts finishing touches on Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad crossing as
eastbound Missouri Pacific Railroad freight train waits in July, 1965.
Photograph by J. Parker Lamb (c) 2016 Center for Railroad Photography
and Art. Lamb-02-062-10
MKT/MP, Taylor, Texas, 1981
Northbound Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad empty coal
train with Burlington Northern power passes a waiting eastbound Missouri Pacific
Railroad freight train at Taylor, Texas, in April, 1981. Photograph by J. Parker
Lamb, (c) 2016 Center for Railroad Photography
and Art. Lamb-02-046-09
 |
 |
Above
Left: This Google Street View from 2022 faces west from the
Robinson St. grade crossing toward the former Katy / I&GN diamond which is now a
crossing of two UP tracks. In the distance, the Main Street Overpass carrying
Texas Highway 95 is visible.
Above
Right: Google Street View captured this 2022 image of the Main
St. grade crossing of UP's former I-GN tracks. A grade separation project c.1965
built the overpass that carries the vast majority of the traffic. After
acquiring the I-GN, MP had expanded this crossing to a total of six tracks by
1933. A watchman's tower was originally used to raise and lower gates manually, but gate
crashes and other problems persisted.
Right: (Railway
Signaling, April, 1935) On December 13, 1933, long before the Main
Street Overpass was built, MP activated a new
warning system for the Main Street grade crossing that used bells and red lights to
alert drivers of approaching trains. The system did not employ gates, but the
watchman's tower remained in use so the signals could be overridden when being
triggered by nearby switching movements that would not pass over the grade
crossing. This was necessary due to the proximity of the I-GN yard. Otherwise, the system would be
ON for significant periods of time during the day, and drivers would soon learn
to ignore the signals which would rarely indicate an actual train. The watchman could reactivate the signals
by removing his override if he determined that a
train was approaching the crossing while switching activities were underway.
When a watchman was not on duty between 11:00 pm and 6:00 am, the
system was fully automatic. |
 |
Above Left: This Google Maps 2022 satellite image
of the Tower 34 crossing shows connectors in the northwest and southwest
quadrants. No evidence has been found to indicate that connecting tracks ever
existed in either of the east quadrants. A curved spur track exists in the
southeast quadrant but it is no longer connected to the main
line. Above
Right: This Microsoft Virtual Earth bird's eye view of the crossing
from c.2008 has south at the top. An interlocker cabinet sits in the northeast
quadrant of the diamond where the tower once stood. The cabinet remains intact,
barely visible on the 2022 imagery, but whether it still houses active
electronics is undetermined.
Below:
R. J. McKay took these two photos of the Taylor passenger depots in 1973 and
1975, respectively.
