Texas Railroad History - Tower 35 - Dallas (Hiland)
A Crossing of the Houston & Texas
Central Railway and the
Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad
Above: This image of Tower 35 is from photo MKT117 of the John W Barriger III
National Railroad Library. The shot was taken by Mr. Barriger
from the rear platform of his business car as it was southbound on the Katy
railroad heading to Dallas Union Station. The date is unknown, but late 1930s or
early 1940s is a reasonable guess based on other photos in the library. The
view is looking to the northeast along the Katy. The street crossing in the
foreground is Airline Drive, and the house visible in the image is still
standing (see below), though it has been substantially updated.
Below: This Feb. 2017 Google Street view shows the house on Airline Drive
that is visible in the above photo next to the former Katy right-of-way. The house has been updated considerably
as would be expected for a span of 80 years. The garage in the foreground has
been rebuilt, and a second story was added in the back of the house. The arched
upper window remains intact but the windows below left have been converted to
a windowed doorway.
When the Houston & Texas Central (H&TC) Railway built through Dallas in
1872, the town was just another rural community in north Texas. By 1886, when
the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT, "Katy") Railroad entered Dallas from the north under
the charter of the Dallas & Greenville Railway, Dallas was developing into a
major rail and transportation center on the banks of the Trinity River. The two
rail lines crossed a few miles north of downtown Dallas where both companies moved significant traffic
across the diamond. On March 31, 1904, Tower 35 was established to interlock the crossing.
The Railroad Commission of Texas (RCT) 1904 Annual Report is the first to list
Tower 35, identified as being located at "Carruth" with a 12-function
interlocking plant installed by the H&TC. The name "Carruth" is a
misspelling of the Caruth family name, owners of much of the land near the
crossing. By this time, the H&TC had already come under ownership of Southern
Pacific (SP), but it continued to operate under its own name.
Although the tower's physical location never changed, the 1915 RCT Annual
Report re-identified Tower 35's location as "Oasis", the name of a community in
Dallas County located about a mile northeast of the tower. The next descriptive
change occurred with the 1924 RCT Annual Report where "DUT" (Dallas Union
Terminal, legally "Union Terminal Co.") was cited as one of the railroads
involved with the interlocker, in addition to the MKT and H&TC. The "DUT"
citation remained in subsequent annual reports until 1927 when it was shortened
to "UT". The 1930 report made a significant change, replacing "UT" with
"DTR&UD", the abbreviation for "Dallas Terminal Railroad and Union Depot."
Unfortunately, Dallas Terminal Railroad and Union Depot was not the same company
as Dallas Union Terminal! This was likely a mistake by RCT; the 1931 report reverted to "UT",
the final annual report to list all interlockers in Texas.
The involvement of DUT with Tower 35 is interesting because Tower 35 was a
long way from downtown where the DUT provided switching services to the eight
railroads that shared its ownership. The company was chartered in 1912 as part
of the development of Dallas Union Station and it began building switching
tracks in 1916. Division of Expense documentation obtained
by Carl Codney from SP's offices in Houston provides some insight into DUT's
involvement with Tower 35. One document states that the Union Terminal Company's
"connection put in service Oct. 8, 1201 AM. This
division of expense effective Oct. 8, 1916." The connection referenced
was a track between the MKT and H&TC rail lines in the northwest
quadrant of the Tower 35 diamond. Apparently, this connection was deemed
necessary for DUT to meet its switching obligations to its owners, and it meant
that DUT had to pay their fair share of the maintenance expenses for Tower 35
(even though RCT did not list them as part of Tower 35 until late 1923.) The document also
mentions that
H&TC operated and maintained the tower. Handwritten notations document
H&TC's removal of two distant signals, one in 1927 and one in 1928, that
reduced its expense share to 25%. DUT and MKT each paid 37.5%.
In 1923, the Dr.
Pepper Company was founded in Dallas and built their headquarters and bottling
plant in the northeast quadrant of the diamond (including a siding known to railroaders as
"Oasis".) Five years later, Mrs. Baird's Bread opened a modern bakery
in the northwest quadrant of the diamond; the bakery remained in operation until 2002. And
despite having been identified as "Carruth" and "Oasis" in
RCT records, Tower
35's location was commonly known to railroaders as "Hiland", an abbreviated
reference to "Highland Park", a real estate development begun in 1907 southwest
of the crossing that became (and remains) an incorporated town in Dallas County.
The 1916 Division of Expense document used "Highland", but the two
superseding documents used "Hiland", as does a summary list produced by SP.
As Dallas continued to grow, the H&TC tracks through downtown
became a safety and traffic congestion problem. In 1926, the
Dallas
Belt Line was completed, enabling SP to bypass downtown Dallas. At that time, the former
H&TC main line was
relegated to secondary status between Tower 118 and
Gifford, a location several miles north of
Tower 35 where SP trains bypassing downtown connected to SP's main line to the
north. In 1927, the H&TC
was integrated into SP's operating railroad in Texas, the Texas & New Orleans
(T&NO) Railway, and shortly thereafter, T&NO
passenger trains began using Katy's tracks between Union Station and Tower 35 to
reduce activity on the former H&TC tracks into downtown.
This routing used the DUT connecting track in the northwest quadrant
of the diamond to facilitate southbound T&NO-to-Katy and northbound Katy-to-T&NO
transitions. A new Division of Expense statement was issued effective October 9, 1930; the
expenses were divided as 35.29% for DUT, 41.18% for MKT, and 23.53% for H&TC.
Tower 35 was replaced
by a cabin interlocker on December 31, 1936 and a new Division of Expense
was issued setting MKT's share at 55.56% and H&TC's at 44.44%. DUT was dropped
from paying for the interlocker maintenance and operation since the cabin was
only operated by T&NO train crews as needed, and the plant did not control
DUT''s switches. Presumably the tower structure was removed at this time. The
move to a cabin interlocker is not surprising since the Katy tracks had become
the main passenger route and the Dallas Belt Line had eliminated the need to use
the former H&TC tracks for freight. T&NO apparently still served a few customers
that required crossing the Katy via a cabin interlocker, but it was clear by this time
that the former H&TC line would not survive much longer. Different SP documents
list different dates for the final demise of the Tower 35 interlocker: one says
February 15, 1941 and another says March 8, 1951. Although the 1941 date seems a
bit early, we do know that in
1947, the T&NO right-of-way between downtown and Hiland
was officially abandoned (per RCT records) and soon became the construction path for Central Expressway.
This does not prove that the 1951 date is incorrect; it's possible that H&TC's
tracks across the Katy were still intact south of the tower for a short distance
(i.e. served from the north), and it might have taken until 1951 for the freeway
construction to reach the tower site several miles north of downtown.
In the early 1990s, the Katy line through Dallas was
taken out of service by successor Union Pacific and was purchased by Dallas Area
Rapid Transit (DART) for conversion to light rail use. Although the Katy tracks
northeast of the crossing were converted to light rail, DART elected to use a tunnel beneath Central Expressway
between downtown and Mockingbird Station, the vicinity of where Tower 35. The Katy segment between downtown and Tower 35 was
then converted to a
hike and bike trail.
Tower 35 Track Charts (from
T&NO Archives)
Above: These 1926 track charts
(with North to the left) show an approximate relationship between the Tower 35
junction and the Oasis siding ("passing track".) The crossing was at a more acute angle
than is depicted on the charts, with the Katy on a NE/SW heading and the SP
heading approximately north/south.
The black square depicting Tower 35 is in the southwest quadrant of the
crossing. The track labeled "U.T.Conn" in the northwest quadrant was added
to facilitate Dallas Union Terminal movements by SP passenger trains. Note the
"coal spur" off of the "SMU Spur" in the left frame, where Southern Methodist
University received coal shipments for distribution to heating facilities around
campus. The right frame shows a connecting track in the southeast quadrant
"removed Sept. 1922". The purpose of this connection is unknown, but one
possibility is that it was installed to support the 1909-11 construction of
White Rock Lake, east of Tower 35, to which the Katy built a spur to supply
coal to the pump house (and, perhaps, building materials during construction of
the dam, which was located near the pump house.)
Below: This snippet from a late 1920s map of Dallas
County shows the Hiland crossing at lower left. Proceeding east along the MKT
line from Hiland there are three significant railroad items to note. First, the
Texas Electric interurban line crossed over the Katy. Today, this is a power
line ROW. Next, the spur to the White Rock Pump Station splits off from the Katy
and heads southeast to the lake, crossing under T&NO's Dallas Belt Line as it
neared the lake. And finally, the Katy crossed over the Dallas Belt Line near
Fisher.
1930 Aerial Photo, Tower 35
Above: In October 1930, Sherman Mills Fairchild took 93 aerial photographs of
Dallas and surrounding
areas commissioned by the City of Dallas. This photo is part of photo #60
available on-line
from Southern Methodist University. The small black square in the center of the
image is the
shadow of Tower 35. The tower is a small white square immediately below (south
of) the shadow,
between the tracks, southwest of the crossing diamond. The map legend identifies 17 as
Cornell
Ave. The
crossing diamond was located where a line extending east on Cornell Ave.
intersected
the two rail lines.
Katy Railroad Bridge Construction
Above: The design of Central Expressway required the freeway to pass beneath the
Katy
Railroad. To facilitate construction, a temporary track was built to permit rail
operations to continue during the bridge construction. In this photo, the bridge
abutments have been constructed on both sides of the freeway, but the central
span of the bridge is not yet in place. The view is looking south with
Mrs. Baird's Bakery visible at lower right.
Above:
In this February, 2017 Google Street View of the Airline Drive crossing over the
Katy Trail, the view is to the northeast toward the site of Tower 35. Sound
walls for Central Expressway are visible beyond the end of the trail. The house
visible in Barriger's photo is behind the trees and fence at left.
Above: This Google Earth image of the vicinity of Tower 35 shows the extensive
development that has occurred there since the tower was abandoned. The east/west
thoroughfare is Mockingbird Lane, with the DART station immediately north of
where the Katy right-of-way crosses. The DART Blue Line uses the former Katy
right-of- way to the northeast while the DART Red Line curves back to the north
to rejoin the original SP alignment. South of Mockingbird Station, DART uses a
tunnel to reach downtown. Tower 35 would have been in the middle of where the
former Katy bridge crossed Central
Expressway.
