Texas Railroad History - Tower 72, Tower 165 and Tower
184 - Corsicana
Crossings of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, the Trinity & Brazos Valley Railway, the Houston & Texas Central Railway
and the Texas Electric Railway
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Left: Looking
west from the rear platform of his business car in May, 1931, railroad
executive John W Barriger III took this photo of Tower 72 at Corsicana
as he was
eastbound on tracks of the St. Louis Southwestern (SSW, "Cotton Belt")
Railway. Tower 72 controlled a crossing of the Cotton Belt and the Burlington - Rock
Island (B-RI) Railroad whose tracks cross north / south in the foreground
(John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library.)
Photos taken several decades later show a noticeably different tower. This is not without precedent; like other buildings,
wooden interlocking towers were damaged by fires, wind, floods (e.g.
Tower 57),
railroad accidents (e.g. Tower 9) and other
perils. There were also occasions where modifications were made to a tower to
facilitate installation of new equipment or to support changed operational
requirements. In some cases, a tower was substantially
expanded without being rebuilt (e.g. Tower 17,
Tower 116.) In other instances, towers were
rebuilt, relocated (Tower 19) and / or completely redesigned (e.g.
Tower 23, Tower 26,
Tower 80.) Tower 72 was neither relocated
nor expanded, but cosmetic and perhaps structural changes were
incorporated.
Corsicana was founded in 1848 to
be the seat of the newly formed Navarro County, named for Jose Antonio
Navarro, a Texas statesman before and after the Texas Revolution.
Navarro personally chose the name Corsicana, for the island of Corsica,
his parents' birthplace. The town was incorporated by state law in 1871. |
Right:
Records of the Railroad Commission of Texas indicate that Tower 72 was
modified multiple times. A comparison of Barriger's photo from the early
1930s to later images such as this photo taken by John
Carr on December 15, 1977 shows obvious changes in the
siding materials and in the windows on both the first floor and the top
floor. The tower was not relocated, so it needed to remain operational
as modifications were made.
John
describes his photo:
"...Extra
9344 East (the Merchandise - train symbol LAEST) has set out the cars
for Dallas, made its air test, and is now crossing the B-RI main line..." |
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Right:
This photo of the crossing that
would become interlocked in 1937 as Tower 184 was taken by Barriger eastbound on the
Cotton Belt facing west; he will pass Tower 72 several seconds
later. The Texas & New Orleans Railroad crosses in the foreground;
note there are four diamonds since both main lines had a siding. Here, Barriger is much closer to the trackside water tower
that looms in the
distance in his Tower 72 photo. Whether the photos were taken on the
same trip is undetermined. Barriger's westward view along the Cotton
Belt line is toward Waco which had likely been his
most recent stop (John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library.)
Tower 184 was operated from inside the Southern Pacific
passenger station (at right.) The operators did not depend on track visibility as
they would at a typical two-story tower. A table top interlocker control
unit accepted various sensor inputs to convey train information using
small electric light indicators. Operators also had a window view of the
diamond. Electric circuits from the interlocking plant controlled
devices (e.g. switches, derails and signals) along the tracks in
response to switches and pushbuttons
on the control unit. The plant automatically incorporated various delay
functions for safety purposes. |
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The Houston & Texas Central (H&TC) Railway began
building north from Houston prior to the Civil War, but it was not until a few
years after the War that construction resumed. Railroad Commission of Texas
(RCT) records show the H&TC tracks reaching Corsicana in 1871 (but RCT was not established until 1891, so records of this nature were based on its
own historical research.) In 1872, the H&TC built 59 miles farther north to Dallas and continued
to Denison near the Red River.
The H&TC became controlled by Southern Pacific (SP) in 1883, but it continued to operate
under its own name.
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Left:
Rails reached Corsicana in November, 1871. "Central" was the H&TC's
nickname and was later applied to SP, at least in Texas. (Dallas
Herald, November 11, 1871)
Right: Had the Texas & Pacific (T&P) Railway crossed the
H&TC as planned, Corsicana would be the metropolis, not Dallas. (Daily
State Journal [Austin], June 8, 1871) |
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Although the T&P did not build through Corsicana
(thwarted by an innocuous provision of state law that required it to cross the
H&TC within a mile of "Browder Springs" which turned out to be near the Dallas
County courthouse) there eventually would be an east / west railroad through
Corsicana. The Tyler Tap Railroad was chartered in 1871 with a simple
goal: "tap" the nearest railroad to bring rail service to
Tyler, an important east Texas town seventy miles northeast of Corsicana. Reaching the nearest
rail line would only require twenty-one miles of track laid from Tyler northeast to Big Sandy
where a connection with the T&P could
be made. The "Tap" planned to build at narrow gauge, thus freight
connections at Big Sandy would require transloading. Before construction on the
"Tap" had
even begun, the International & Great Northern (I&GN) Railroad
built tracks
through Tyler in 1873 providing main line connections at Troup (I&GN) and
Mineola (T&P.) Tyler suddenly had rail service
in two directions. The "Tap" wasn't needed
for its original goal, but it was completed
to Big Sandy anyway, in 1877. Two years later, new
investors amended its charter with plans to build extensions in both directions.
New tracks northeast from Big Sandy would go to
Texarkana; new tracks southwest
from Tyler would go to Waco. The charter revision
also changed the railroad's name to the Texas & St. Louis (T&SL)
Railway.
Above: The
Galveston Daily News
of November 16, 1880 reported the progress of the T&SL's southwest
extension out of Tyler. Tracks reached Athens
in early December. |
Right:
The T&SL southwest extension reached Corsicana in late April, celebrated by this
T&SL ad in the Galveston Daily News
of April 27, 1881. At Corsicana, the T&SL crossed the H&TC near the
center of town and continued to Waco that same year. Three months earlier, T&SL
ads had begun to include a new slogan -- "Cotton Belt Route". The
nickname
would survive two bankruptcies and remain in continuous use for more than a hundred years. |
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Mostly known to the public as the Cotton Belt,
the T&SL expanded rapidly causing railroad magnate Jay
Gould to view it as a genuine threat to his business. Gould was beginning a major push to
expand his rail empire into Texas starting with his sudden election as President of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas ("Katy") Railway
in December, 1879 (an event orchestrated by Gould loyalists who had infiltrated
Katy executive management.) Within eighteen months, he had also become President
of the T&P (April, 1881) and the I&GN (June, 1881.) These were all major
elements of the long
and complicated story
of Gould's expansion into Texas. Gould's majority ownership in the T&P was solid
and unquestioned, he had no ownership of the I&GN but this was not known
publicly, and he had little ownership in the
Katy, which was public knowledge, particularly on the part of Katy stockholders
who eventually sought to fire him. The Cotton Belt was a poorly designed railroad with operational (and thus, financial) difficulties,
but it served St. Louis from Texas, a market Gould wanted exclusively as his
own. Concerned
that with the right leadership the Cotton Belt could threaten his business,
Gould began to plot a takeover, but ...
... the
Depression of
1882-1885 hit railroads particularly hard, causing the T&SL to enter
receivership in 1884. For the T&SL, this was a short-term positive development
because it kept the railroad from falling into Gould's hands. In February, 1886, the St. Louis, Arkansas & Texas
(SLA&T) Railway was formed by the bankruptcy judge to become the new
Cotton Belt. This development was opposed by T&SL President Sam Fordyce who had advised
the judge that
unsolved operational issues would inhibit the profitability of the new company. Despite Fordyce's
concerns, the receivership ended and Fordyce was named SLA&T President. As
he pondered new construction, Fordyce converted the entire Cotton Belt to
standard gauge in January, 1887.
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Left:
Though he was perhaps the reluctant President of the SLA&T, Fordyce decided to
act boldly by building new Cotton Belt branch lines in north Texas to compete
with Gould on traffic from
Sherman, Fort Worth and
Hillsboro. At Hillsboro, there were no
other railroads besides the Katy (leased at the time to Gould's Missouri
Pacific Railroad) and the town was only forty miles from Corsicana. In
1887, the Cotton Belt laid 35 miles of track toward Hillsboro and
finished the remaining five miles the following year. The branch point
from the main line at Corsicana was called "Corsicana Junction" a little
under two miles west of downtown, seen here in a 1955 aerial image ((c) historicaerials.com.) Hillsboro's latitude is slightly south of
Corsicana's, but the branch departed on a northwest heading, though only
for about eight miles before turning due west. This was so the Cotton
Belt could serve a few tiny towns along the route, e.g. Blooming Grove,
Frost and Mertens. The line to Hillsboro
was rarely, if ever, profitable, and it was abandoned in 1940. The wye
created by the branch point at Corsicana was left intact by the Cotton
Belt for operational purposes.
Gould knew that the Cotton
Belt's new branch construction would stress its finances, and he was
aware that the SLA&T had structural issues that negatively impacted its
profitability. Sensing an opportunity, Gould made a secret agreement with Fordyce in 1888 to
cooperate on traffic through Texarkana. This provided an excuse for
helping the Cotton Belt stay out of bankruptcy, but in reality it was a
means for Gould to gain financial leverage with short term loans and
stock purchases. This positioned Gould to exercise substantial influence
on the process of reorganizing the Cotton Belt when it inevitably became
insolvent (in 1889) as Fordyce had predicted.
In 1891, the
new bankruptcy plan created a railroad dominated by Gould. It was known as
the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, but still nicknamed the Cotton Belt
(which Gould had preferred to be the new company's corporate name.)
Gould was able to have his younger son Edwin installed as Vice President of the
SSW under Fordyce. When Fordyce resigned, Edwin became President in 1898 and he
successfully led the Cotton Belt until his retirement
in 1925. A series of ownership changes in the late 1920s resulted in the Cotton
Belt becoming a subsidiary of SP in 1932. |
In 1907, the Trinity & Brazos Valley (T&BV) Railway
passed through Corsicana as it built north toward Dallas. This would have been
odd under its
original 1902 charter which called for construction southeast from
Hillsboro to
Beaumont. Executing that charter, it had a line from
Cleburne through Hillsboro to
Mexia by 1905, but not much business. That year, it was
acquired by the Colorado & Southern (C&S) Railway to become part of a grand
plan conceived by C&S Director Benjamin Franklin
Yoakum. Yoakum was a native
Texan born in 1859 in Tehuacana, a small community near Mexia (the T&BV
had laid
tracks within a mile of Yoakum's birthplace.) His start in railroading came
as a member of an I&GN track gang, but by 1897, he was General Manager of the
St. Louis & San Francisco ("Frisco") Railway in St. Louis. Yoakum rose
to become the Chairman of the Board of the Frisco and he became
the Chair of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the
Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific (CRI&P) Railway, effectively its
CEO.
Originally, arranging for C&S to buy the T&BV was not Yoakum's
plan. His Frisco and Rock Island lines carried Midwest export
commodities but their tracks terminated in Fort Worth, 250 miles from
Galveston. To reach the Gulf, traffic
was handed over to SP and other railroads.
Yoakum wanted to build his own line between Fort Worth and Houston /
Galveston, and he wanted to route it via Dallas which had twice the population of Fort
Worth. Rock Island surveyors
were able to find a low grade / low curve route from Dallas to
Houston that would be superior to the lines of Yoakum's competitors,
particularly SP which owned the H&TC's Dallas - Houston route.
In 1902, Yoakum sought a railroad charter to
build from Fort Worth to Galveston via
Dallas under the name Chicago, Rock Island & Gulf (CRI&G).
The CRI&G was organized as a Fort Worth-based subsidiary of the
Illinois-based CRI&P corporation. The charter also included consolidation
of three existing Rock Island subsidiaries in Texas (one in
Fort Worth and two others in the Texas Panhandle.) The CRI&G laid tracks
from Fort Worth to Dallas in 1903, but Yoakum elected to delay building the extension to
Houston. The CRI&G charter had created substantial consternation for the other railroads in
Texas, hence they began to approach Yoakum for negotiations seeking to offer
an alternative so that he would not build his own line to the Gulf.
The railroads rightfully
viewed Yoakum's plan as a serious threat, but could they stop it? All of
them tried, but SP chairman E. H. Harriman had the most to lose and he
tried the hardest. Harriman was aware that Rock Island surveyors had
identified a route between Dallas and Houston that was shorter and
faster than his H&TC line. Negotiations with Yoakum ensued, and the two
men signed a massive contract that would potentially reshape the course
of Texas railroading ... but the contract required approval by RCT.
An Austin Statesman article on May
15, 1903 called it the "Rock Island - Central deal"
and explained that Yoakum had agreed to route all of his traffic to and from the
Texas Gulf coast using full operational rights
granted by SP on four of its Texas subsidiaries. Another
Austin Statesman article on May 21
noted that the proposed contract does "...not require the Rock
Island to build one mile of track nor one house [depot] of any kind, and
still the company acquires all of the benefits and advantages as if the
matter had come before the Legislature without any disguise, as a
straight merger proposition." The story went on to predict that this
argument would "...form the several grounds upon which the commission
will refuse..." to approve the contract. RCT interpreted the
contract as ceding effective control of SP in Texas to Yoakum,
in essence a partial merger or joint venture between the
two railroads which should have been considered by the Legislature. The newspaper was
correct; the Commission voted 2 - 1 to
deny approval. |
Above:
The Rock Island / SP deal was front page news in the
Austin Statesman on May 15, 1903. |
Rejected by RCT, Yoakum moved aggressively to
compete with SP. He began by creating the Gulf Coast Lines (GCL)
syndicate to acquire and / or build new tracks along the coast between
New Orleans and Houston where SP was dominant. Yoakum extended the GCL
concept to Brownsville in 1903 when he began a race against SP to connect the
Lower Rio Grande Valley to the national rail
network. He still
needed a line between north Texas and Houston, but rather than build it
under the CRI&G charter, Yoakum proposed to acquire the
struggling T&BV and redirect its charter to build a north / south route on the
Rock Island survey. Yoakum partnered with Edwin Hawley,
principal owner / financier of the C&S, to buy the T&BV. This added
financial heft to Yoakum's plans and gave Hawley skin in the game by
creating a Denver -
Galveston route. C&S already had Denver - Fort Worth service through its Colorado holdings and
its Texas-based Fort Worth &
Denver City (FW&DC) Railway. The T&BV would extend C&S operations to
Houston and Galveston. Soon after the purchase in August, 1905, Hawley sold 50% of the T&BV to Rock
Island.
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Left: The April 20,
1906 issue of Railway World
contained this press release from Rock Island regarding its acquisition
of a half-interest in the T&BV. The subsequent discussion of the
Colorado Southern, New Orleans & Pacific Railroad pertained to the
development of the GCL route network between Beaumont and New Orleans.
As noted in the press release, the Frisco was an "allied interest" of
Rock Island, but the two railroads never succeeded in completing a
formal merger. The alliance ended in 1909 and in
1910, the Frisco acquired all of the GCL railroads from the St. Louis
Trust Co. |
The T&BV was acquired by C&S in August, 1905. Yoakum formed a construction company and signed a
personal contract with C&S to build the planned T&BV tracks. He moved quickly to revise the
charter and build fourteen miles east from Mexia to Brewer, the nearest point on
the Rock Island survey (which he would rename Teague, his mother's maiden name.) Yoakum negotiated rights to use
the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway
("Santa Fe") line between Cleburne and Fort Worth so that when
construction from Teague to Houston was complete, the T&BV would be able to
begin Fort Worth - Houston service via Cleburne and Teague.
Far
Right: The T&BV's path
through Corsicana crossed both existing railroads, but only the Cotton Belt
crossing was at grade.
Right:
Yoakum wasted no
time in applying for interlockers at crossings he was planning to
establish, both sooner (Mexia) and later (Corsicana.) On December 15,
1905, the Waxahachie Daily Light
reported RCT's approval of a T&BV interlocker for its H&TC crossing at
Mexia, and noted that its application for a "grade crossing" at
Corsicana was "held under advisement." RCT's permission was needed to
cross the Cotton
Belt, and the "advisement" period may
have been to allow the Cotton Belt time to respond to the T&BV's application
and to evaluate whether the mode of crossing should be "at grade" or grade-separated. |
 |
Right:
The first T&BV trains between Fort Worth and Houston commenced January 28, 1907.
C&S' Denver - Houston service via Fort Worth, Cleburne and Teague began
October 1, 1907. (Houston Post, January 28, 1907)
Far Right:
The Fort Worth Record
and Register of January 22, 1907 reported that the T&BV's
construction northward from Teague had reached Corsicana. The Teague
- Dallas construction was shortened by stopping at
Waxahachie and obtaining rights on the Katy into Dallas. The first Dallas -
Houston train operated on July 1, 1907.
RCT commissioned
Tower 72 on November 21, 1907 as a 2-story manned tower in the southwest
quadrant of the Cotton Belt / T&BV diamond. It was a 23-function
mechanical interlocking plant, a count that suggests the presence of a
connecting track and / or sidings as only twelve functions would be
needed for a simple crossing. |
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The Santa Fe trackage rights between Cleburne and Fort Worth
prohibited the T&BV from stopping at any intermediate points. On December
16, 1907, RCT ruled that the failure to serve towns along that route violated
the T&BV's state charter and it ordered the T&BV to begin serving those
communities. The T&BV reluctantly complied, but along with grade differences, RCT's
ruling motivated the T&BV to begin routing its Fort Worth - Houston
traffic via Dallas and Waxahachie, eventually dropping the Santa Fe
rights.
Left: The
Waxahachie Daily Light of August
11, 1908 speculated that because of grade differences, Yoakum would soon
opt for a Rock Island - Katy - T&BV routing through Dallas and
Waxahachie instead of sending the T&BV's Fort Worth traffic through
Cleburne and Teague. |
By law, the T&BV would have been responsible for the
capital outlay for Tower 72 because it was the "second railroad" that created
the crossing and the crossing didn't exist in 1901 (at pre-1902 crossings, the capital expense was split
evenly.) Yoakum's early application to RCT for a grade crossing at Corsicana
suggests that T&BV rightfully took the lead, but the architecture of Tower 72 as seen in Barriger's photo does not
supply a convincing argument for a design by either railroad (largely because
there are very few confirmed tower photos for either railroad for comparison.) It is also
possible that Barriger's photo, taken roughly 25 years after Tower 72's
commissioning, does not show the original tower.
Typically,
the railroad funding the construction would take the
design and construction lead, and would be responsible for operations and
maintenance (O&M) staffing, but the railroads were free to negotiate a different
arrangement.
The tower's recurring O&M expenses (e.g. labor, supplies, materials and
utilities) would be split between the two railroads, typically based on the
percentage of the total interlocker functions
used by each
railroad (as the newspaper article noted, the Mexia interlocker expenses were to
be split "based upon the functions used by each road.") In 1916, RCT began
publishing information designating which railroad had staffing responsibility at
each tower, and for Tower 72, it was the Cotton Belt. Either the Cotton Belt had
taken the design, construction and staffing lead at the outset, or more likely, it took over the
O&M responsibility when
the T&BV went into receivership in 1914.
Yoakum moved from St. Louis to New York c.1907 but did not retire
from the Frisco. Financially, the relationship between the Frisco and Rock
Island railroads had begun to deteriorate as the expansion plans of Rock
Island's Reid - Moore ownership group were starting to unravel. Yoakum secretly
assembled a group of Midwest businessmen to raise capital for the Frisco, and on
December 1, 1909, he executed a surprise deal to purchase the entire block of
Frisco stock held by Rock Island. Because Reid - Moore was facing immense public
pressure, high debt, and scrutiny from the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
they agreed to sell at a significant loss. Yoakum restructured Frisco management
and proceeded to buy the GCL railroads.
Yoakum retired from the Frisco as it was sinking into a receivership that
began in May, 1913. A year later, the T&BV also went into receivership. It had maintained
a reliable business carrying
Frisco and Rock Island traffic between north Texas and the GCL carriers in
Houston, but it was not enough to sustain the entire railroad. The Teague -
Cleburne tracks were not profitable, and there was very little local traffic
along the main line. The only towns of any size at all -- Waxahachie, Corsicana and
Teague -- were small and did not generate the level of freight commerce and
passenger traffic needed to reach profitability on a consistent basis (due in
part to Waxahachie and Corsicana each being served by two other railroads.) The Federal judge overseeing the
T&BV case
canceled all of its trackage rights agreements which devastated its
operations. Waxahachie and Cleburne became its farthest operational endpoints to
the north, as was Houston to the south. Direct service facilitated by trackage
rights into Dallas, Fort Worth and Galveston was no
longer available on the T&BV.
In 1915, the bankruptcy judge allowed
the T&BV to sign a trackage rights agreement with SP for access to Fort Worth
over an H&TC branch line that passed through Waxahachie. The judge also
permitted a rights agreement to serve Galveston from Houston over tracks of
another SP subsidiary. Because of Fort Worth's important rail
connections to the north and west, particularly the C&S route to Denver
(operated by the FW&DC in Texas)
it was advantageous for the T&BV to seek Receiver approval to operate direct
Fort Worth - Waxahachie - Houston - Galveston service using SP trackage rights
at both ends. Use of the Katy tracks to Dallas did not resume until the receivership ended in 1930.
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A new
company, the Burlington - Rock Island (B-RI) Railroad, was created to
own and operate the T&BV rail lines out of bankruptcy. The Chicago, Burlington
and Quincy Railroad ("Burlington") had acquired C&S in 1908, hence
B-RI was owned jointly by Burlington and Rock Island. The parent
companies alternated taking the lead in managing
the B-RI over five year intervals; the FW&DC executed Burlington's
responsibilities. According to the Handbook of
Texas "...the Burlington-Rock Island owned twenty-six
locomotives, 346 freight cars, and nineteen passenger cars..." In
1931, the FW&DC
and Rock Island jointly leased the B-RI tracks north of Teague, creating what
became known as the Joint Texas Division (JTD.) Both railroads wanted
better operational control and flexibility, and the JTD was expanded south of
Teague in 1950.
Left: The
Fort Worth Press of July 8, 1930
reported that the Texas Attorney General had approved the name change in
the T&BV charter revision that was being advanced by the Texas
Legislature as part of the completion of the T&BV's bankruptcy
proceedings. Only one earlier reference to the name "Burlington - Rock
Island" has been found in Texas newspapers, in the
Houston Post-Dispatch of January
17, 1929. In an article discussing a dinner / dance to be held by the
Houston Traffic Club, guests for "the Burlington - Rock Island and
Trinity and Brazos Valley" were listed suggesting that at least by the
start of 1929, the B-RI name was being associated with the T&BV. Since
the name was known in early 1929, it seems strange that no other B-RI
references prior to the Fort Worth Press
article have been found. |
B-RI
proceeded to pare its
unprofitable routes, abandoning the tracks from Mexia to Cleburne in stages
beginning in 1932. The last stage to be abandoned was the Mexia -
Hubbard segment in 1942. The Mexia - Teague segment
-- the first T&BV tracks built by Yoakum -- remained intact until 1976 to
serve Mexia from the main line. That main line is now a major route for Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF.)
The Cotton Belt and T&NO lines through Corsicana also remain very active, now owned by
Union Pacific (UP.)
Files in the RCT archives at DeGolyer Library,
Southern Methodist University show that Tower 72 was not static over the years and there is photographic
evidence of substantial changes to its appearance. Modifications to the tower were initiated
in letters to RCT dated April 14, 1932, September 30, 1940, September 30, 1952,
and April 21, 1954, but the nature and extent of the changes is
undetermined. Tower 72 was active for many years, but was retired and razed,
reportedly in 1984.
Below Left: This view looks
north past Tower 72 along the ex-T&BV main line through Corsicana. The Cotton
Belt tracks cross just behind the tower from this angle. Below Right:
a close-up of the tower and its order hoop (both photos, Gary Morris c.1976.)
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Left: When
a young Myron Malone (Webmaster Emeritus of this website) was
photographed beside Tower 72 in the early 1980s, he was looking south
down the B-RI while standing on Cotton
Belt rails. The side of the tower ahead and to the right of Myron is the east face
of the tower showing two windows on the first floor. The tower was so
close to the tracks that the semaphore pole protruded through the roof
overhang. (Robert W. Courtney photo)
Right: Farther north in Corsicana, the T&BV crossing of the
H&TC was grade separated. Oddly, although it was the T&BV's task to cross
H&TC's
existing tracks, they apparently did so by going
under the H&TC's bridge over Post Oak Creek. This
Google Earth satellite view from 2024 shows BNSF's
former B-RI tracks crossing under UP's bridge over Post Oak Creek.
Presumably this was the original arrangement; historic aerial imagery
shows that it was in place by 1949, but no earlier imagery has been
found and the Sanborn maps of Corsicana do not extend this far north. Along the former T&BV tracks about 425 yards northwest of this
bridge, the Texas Electric Railway crossed at grade, a
crossing that was interlocked as Tower 165 in 1931. |
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Right:
This 2024 Google Street View looking northwest from E. 9th Ave. shows
the connecting track that ran behind Tower 72. The track comes off of
the BNSF main line and reaches, but no longer connects to, UP's former
Cotton Belt tracks. Aerial imagery narrows the date of disconnection to
between October, 2012 and October, 2014. Note the "D" (Derail)
sign and the orange derail mounted on the rail.
At the crossing
at far right, equipment cabinets now
occupy the former site of Tower 72. The ornate former T&BV depot sits to
the left of the tracks in the distance. |
 |
The H&TC / Cotton Belt crossing 1,500 ft. west of Tower
72 was not originally interlocked. By law, all trains were required to stop, but
this was not a significant issue because the Corsicana Union Depot was located
on the northwest corner of the crossing. Most trains on the Cotton Belt and H&TC
would stop anyway, at least for water and perhaps for passengers. The precise
motivation for interlocking this crossing is undetermined, but railroads had begun
submitting interlocking requests to RCT for their own crossings which previously
had been exempt from RCT's jurisdiction until that policy began to change in the latter 1920s. The Cotton Belt
came under SP's control in 1932, and the H&TC had been leased by SP's
operating railroad for Texas, the Texas & New Orleans (T&NO) Railroad, since
1927 (and was fully merged in 1934.) On December 21, 1937, interim authority to
begin operating the newly designated Tower 184 interlocker was granted for the
Cotton Belt / T&NO crossing. The interlocking controls were located in the Union
Depot.
Above: These images are
extracted from two tables that appeared in the January 1, 1938 edition of
Railway Age. In both cases, Corsicana is
listed as a location of interlockings "Completed During 1937". The left entry
shows the Tower 184 plant with five electric working levers;
"Working Levers" implies operators which Tower 184 is known to have had. The
right entry shows an automatic interlocking at Corsicana where two T&NO tracks
crossed two tracks "on other road" requiring twelve signals. The only place in
Corsicana where two T&NO tracks crossed two other tracks was at the Cotton Belt
crossing associated with Tower 184. This suggests that the Tower 184
interlocking had both automatic and manual components (or was simply two
separate plants installed in the same facility and covered under the same RCT
documentation.) The automatic interlocking handled the signaling for the main
tracks (each with an adjacent siding.) The five Working Levers allowed operators
to set signals and switches for connecting tracks, spur tracks and nearby
sidings. By 1937, steam locomotives were capable of operating over longer
distances without taking additional fuel or water, hence many freight trains
could operate through Corsicana without needing to stop. Most likely, Tower 184
was designed so that the automatic interlocking relieved the operators of
signaling duties for those trains, limiting operator involvement to yard /
switching movements.
Above Left: Whistle codes for
an interlocking imply the presence of operators to react to the whistles. A Special
Instructions bulletin issued by the Cotton Belt on November 1, 1940 carried this
table of whistle codes for Tower 72 and Tower 184, respectively. Employee
Timetables (ETTs) show that both facilities
were staffed "continuously". Above Right:
This table of whistle codes and other instructions for trains at Tower 184
appeared in a T&NO ETT dated September 3, 1944. Although the towers differed
substantially in how they were implemented, operators in both facilities, 500
yards apart, executed the same basic duties on a 24 / 7 basis.
On February 19, 1945, T&NO requested
"permission to install an additional
color light dwarf signal" for Tower 184, but otherwise, it appears to have had few changes over the years. The
interlocking was
retired in 1988 when the Cotton Belt line to Waco was abandoned west of the Tower 184 diamond.
Entering Corsicana from the east, the former Cotton Belt line now curves to the south and merges onto the UP main
line toward Hearne.
Above: Tower 184 in September, 1960
with 'Corsicana' and '184'
signs hanging from the eaves (photo, Everett DeGolyer, Jr., courtesy DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University)
| Corsicana rail photos from the Tom Kline Collection (click to enlarge) |
Above Left:
The 1910 Sanborn Fire Insurance Co. map of Corsicana shows the location of Tower
72 in the southwest quadrant of the Cotton Belt (east-west) / T&BV
(north-south) crossing. The lettering beside the T&BV track says "The
Valley Road (Main Track)". Under magnification (right), the map reveals a two-story "Switch
Tower". Although the T&BV adopted "The Valley Road" as a marketing
nickname, the public preferred "Boll Weevil", supposedly related to the
railroad's special trains known for carrying farmers to Boll Weevil
Conferences as they sought a solution to the pest that was devastating
Texas cotton crops. The solution was found through experimental cotton
farms established by Ned Green, President of the
Texas Midland Railroad.
Above Right: The
Sanborn map depicts the Union Passenger Station in the northwest
quadrant of the Cotton Belt (east-west) / H&TC (north-south) crossing. Note the
four diamonds at the crossing; these are undoubtedly the diamonds that
became managed by the automatic interlocking installed in 1937. |
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Above:
Ron Maxfield describes this Henry Stark photo from the Dallas Historical
Society Collection...
"This photo of
Corsicana's Union Depot was taken January 15, 1896, one year before it
was demolished and replaced with a new brick structure. Obvious
weathering through the years. The locomotive is the Schenectady built
4-4-0 #137. It is a Houston & Texas Central engine southbound."
Right: Note the
pivot structure in the image located at the crossing diamonds. It is
currently rotated to allow the H&TC locomotive to proceed south while
providing indication to any approaching Cotton Belt locomotives that
both of its
tracks are blocked. The photo was taken only five years after RCT had
been created by the Texas Legislature and five years before it was
tasked (in 1901) with managing railroad grade crossing safety. At that
time, RCT began mandating the use of swing gates for "at grade" railroad crossings
until interlockers could be installed.
RCT controlled the timing of how
quickly interlockers would be installed so as not to overtax its
engineering staff, which had to approve all design plans and inspect
each installation. RCT would periodically order railroads to interlock
specific crossings, but railroads could also request RCT to order an interlocker
installed at a particular location. The apparatus in this photo is unlike the
typical swing
gates installed in response to RCT's 1901 order, and it is the only one
its kind found so far. |
 |
Above Left:
The T&BV depot is still standing 800 ft. north of the former Tower 72 crossing,
seen here from 6th Ave. looking north. It is in use by BNSF for storage and
other purposes. (Google Street View, 2024)
Above Right: The Katy railroad drew track charts
in 1915 for numerous towns across Texas, most of which did not have Katy tracks.
This chart of Corsicana (courtesy Ed Chambers Collection) shows that there were
connecting tracks at both of the Cotton Belt's junctions, in the southwest
quadrant at Tower 72 and in the southeast quadrant at the H&TC crossing (which
would become Tower 184 twenty-two years later.)
Below
Left: This view of the T&BV depot is from its B-RI days in the
1950s. The camera is looking south at Chicago, Burlington & Quincy #9981-B which
has made a scheduled stop leading the northbound Sam Houston Zephyr
passenger train operated by the FW&D. (American-Rails.com Collection)
Below Right: This 1925 view of
the future Tower 184 crossing looks north at Corsicana Union Depot. There are at
least four tracks in the southeast quadrant for interchange between the Cotton
Belt and the H&TC. The four diamonds illustrated on the Sanborn map are visible. This image snippet comes from a larger
1925 aerial photo (Ron Maxfield Collection, hat tip Kal Silverberg.)
Far Right: Stuart Schroeder describes his
photo... "Southern Pacific SD45 9031 brings the Blue Streak Merchandise
(BSMFF 02) through the shed track from the Cotton Belt to the SP Ennis
Subdivision at Corsicana on November 3, 1978. The SSW main toward Waco
is shown at the left and the Waco local is tied down in the house track.
If you look carefully you can see a Cotton Belt red EV caboose in the
distance." (click to enlarge)
Right: In this undated photo of Corsicana Union Depot, a
southbound SP train has stopped at the depot. Note the white gatepost;
its gate is not fully visible because from this angle, it aligns with
the post across the Cotton Belt tracks. (Dane Williams Collection,
click to enlarge) |
 |
 |
Above: Photographed through an
interurban car window by Charles Van Winkle sometime in the 1931-1941 timeframe, this is the Tower 165 crossing of the
B-RI and the Texas Electric (TE) Railway. The white hut at left housed the
interlocking plant and its controls. The view is south-southeast along the Texas
Electric toward downtown Corsicana. The Commerce St. (also called Navarro
St.) grade crossing is marked
by the white crossbuck. In the distance, the track can be seen curving to the
left where the TE reached Beaton St. and swung to a more southeasterly heading
toward downtown. This photo appears
in Texas Electric Railway by Johnnie Myers
(1982, Central Electric Railfans' Association, hat tip Jimmy Barlow.) The caption in the book reads:
"Burlington - Rock Island crossing just north of
Corsicana. Crossing was protected by derails normally set against Texas Electric
trains and manually controlled by the TE operator."
Note the piping extending out of the bottom of the hut and elevated off the
ground by standoffs. Similar piping can be seen on the opposite side of the B-RI
tracks continuing out to a derail device that extends to the rails. These
devices were the "derails normally set against" the TE.
In 1913, the Southern Traction Company
built an electric interurban railroad from Dallas to Corsicana. Entering the
north side of Corsicana, Southern Traction built across the T&BV tracks
approximately 425 yards northwest of the T&BV bridge over Post Oak Creek. In 1917, the Southern Traction
Company and the Texas Traction Company merged to form the Texas
Electric (TE) Railway.
In 1930, the TE began to establish controls
for its grade crossings of steam railroads. A table of active interlockers published by RCT
on December 31, 1930 identifies Tower 165 as
the TE / T&BV crossing in Corsicana, and it is noted as under construction
in lieu of listing its commissioning date. Later information published by RCT
lists the actual commissioning date as July 17, 1930. Two
other crossings involving the TE -- Tower 166 (Plano) and
Tower
167 (Hillsboro) -- are also identified as under construction. In 1931, a
fourth such crossing was commissioned, Tower 174 in
Italy; it did not make the 1930 table because that list ended at
Tower 170. The
specific impetus for multiple TE interlocker installations c.1931 is unknown,
but it is very likely related to a push by RCT in the latter half of the 1920s
to upgrade minor crossings (where a lightly used line crossed a heavily used
line) throughout Texas using cabin interlockers or remote controlled electric
interlockers. This effort had begun in late 1925 and accelerated throughout the
remainder of the 1920s. Seventeen such interlockers were commissioned in 1929
alone. Activity continued into 1930 and then tapered off by 1932.
Coming
out of bankruptcy, the reorganization of the T&BV into the B-RI occurred in 1930
as Tower 165 was in the planning and construction stage. While the B-RI tracks
remain in use as a BNSF main line, the TE tracks have not survived.
TE operations to Corsicana ceased in 1941.
 |
Left: This
annotated Google Maps satellite image shows the path of the TE (yellow
dotted line) and the two nearby railroads. The SP (H&TC) tracks (blue
arrows) came first, and its construction included a bridge over Post Oak
Creek (pink circle). When the T&BV (pink arrows) came along in 1907, it
appears to have laid its tracks beneath SP's Post Oak Creek bridge as a
means for achieving a grade-separated crossover.
The TE's
crossing of the T&BV (yellow circle) was less than 1,300 feet northwest
of the bridge over Post Oak Creek. This crossing became Tower 165 in
1931 by which time the T&BV had become the B-RI. The TE also crossed
Post Oak Creek (green circle.)
Below: The BRI's Joint Texas Division ETT dated August
29, 1937 included this reference to the TE crossing at Corsicana,
describing it as "Electric Signals; No Derails." Oddly, despite this
reference, the ETT omitted the crossing location from its station list
whereas the steam railroad crossings were included. A year later,
another ETT issued for the Joint Texas Division added the TE crossing to
the station list noting its location as 0.9 miles north of B-RI's
Corsicana depot.
-1937-08-29.jpg) |
 |
 |
Above Left: In the left
side of this Google Street View image, a TE bridge abutment remains in place, as
seen from Beaton St. with the Commerce St. bridge over Post Oak Creek visible in
the distance. Above Right: The
TE's oblique angle crossing of Commerce St. is indicated by the path of the
utility poles. (Google Street View)
Above:
This annotated Google Maps satellite image (with Street View insets) shows two
concrete culverts that remain in place that carried the TE's tracks over a
drainage at the Tower 165 crossing. Below:
Looking southeast down the BNSF tracks in 2013, the abandoned TE culverts mark
the path of the TE. Utility poles also mark the TE right-of-way. UP's bridge
over Post Oak Creek is visible in the distance where the BNSF tracks pass beneath. Google Maps identifies the cross street as
Navarro, but immediately south of the tracks the name changes to Commerce.
(Google Street View)
