Texas Railroad History - Tower
79 - Paris
A Crossing of the Texas & Pacific, the Texas Midland,
the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe, and the Paris & Great Northern Railroads
 |
Left: The July, 1936
issue of Railway Signaling and Communications
contained an article about the conversion of Tower 79 at Paris from a manual interlocker into an automated
plant. The article opened with this image showing a home
signal on the Texas & Pacific (T&P) tracks with the tower in the distance and an
inset showing one of the crossing diamonds. The tower was
south of the T&P tracks; this view faces east from the west home signal with
the T&P yard and depot three quarters of a mile beyond the tower.
The article states
that all of the work required for installing the new system and
modifying the track signals was performed by T&P signal forces in 1933.
This suggests that Tower 79 had been designed and built by the T&P. The
T&P is known to have been responsible for staffing the tower for
operations and maintenance (O&M) with the recurring costs shared among
all of the railroads that had tracks served by the
tower.
The lower floor of the Tower 79 building was used to house the
equipment needed to do the conversion to an automatic plant. This
resulted in the
tower standing unstaffed for an additional thirty years until it was
razed c.1963. This photo is the only
one of Tower 79 that has ever been identified (hat tip, Barton Jennings.)
[Because of the way the article in Railway Signaling and Communications
was converted to PDF, it is best viewed as four separate pages:
Page 1,
Page 2,
Page 3,
Page 4. ] |
The town of Paris was founded in 1844 by George Wright,
a merchant and landowner in the area. The community quickly became the county
seat of Lamar County and was officially named for the great French capital, the name being chosen by one of Wright's employees.
In 1873, the Texas & Pacific (T&P) Railway built 54 miles east from
Sherman to within nine miles of Paris. Two years
later, the remaining nine miles was completed and Paris had its first rail
service. Although the T&P had been chartered by Congress in 1871 for the purpose of building a southern transcontinental
line from Marshall, Texas to San Diego, California, it was following a
confusing, parallel route strategy in Texas because of the railroads the Texas
Legislature had allowed it to acquire.
In the years before the Civil War,
the State of Texas was desperate for rail lines and it somewhat freely granted
charters to anyone who claimed to have the resources to lay tracks. The famous
Transcontinental Railroad was years in the future, but companies were
already pondering a southern transcontinental line requiring a lengthy track across
Texas. There were two competing concepts. One envisioned a line diagonally
across the state from the Arkansas border to
El Paso. In the opposite
direction, tracks would extend northeast across Arkansas and Missouri to reach
St. Louis. The other concept was to lay tracks between Atlanta, Vicksburg and
Shreveport, more or less a straight line, and continue over the state line into Marshall. From
there, tracks would be built
westward across Texas to El Paso.
Two Texas railroad charters were issued prior to
the Civil War for the purpose of building across the state. One was granted to the
Vicksburg & El Paso Railroad Co. which eventually changed its name to
Southern Pacific Railroad, unrelated to the famous Southern Pacific
that evolved in California in a similar timeframe. Work began at Swanson's
Landing, a riverport at the south end of Caddo Lake (near the present day town
of Karnak) connected by waterways to New Orleans. This enabled rails,
locomotives and other materials to be shipped to Texas by barge. A track was
completed southwest to Marshall by the end of 1859. Tracks were also completed
to Jonesville in the direction of Shreveport, intending to connect with a
Louisiana railroad at the state line. The other charter was granted to the
Memphis, El Paso & Pacific which was to build west from
Texarkana through the counties bordering the Red
River. It planned to cross the Brazos River at Fort Belknap (85 miles northwest
of Fort Worth) before
turning southwest to El Paso. A total of 65 miles of track was laid west from
Texarkana prior to the Civil War. Additional grading was done in the vicinity of
Jefferson, a major
riverport with access to New Orleans.
Both railroads were effectively
defunct after the Civil War. The Legislature granted a charter in July, 1870
to the Southern Transcontinental Railroad, a new company that was allowed to acquire
all of the assets of the Memphis, El Paso & Pacific and
the Southern Pacific, though it failed to do so. On March 3, 1871,
Congress granted a Federal railroad charter to the Texas Pacific Railroad
(renamed Texas & Pacific Railway, "T&P" a year later.) The Texas Legislature
authorized the T&P to acquire the Southern Pacific and the Southern
Transcontinental Railroad Co., and this occurred on March 21 and March 30,
respectively, 1872.
Right:
The
Dallas Herald of May 25, 1872
reported the appointment of Gen. Grenville M. Dodge as T&P chief
engineer. Dodge would play a key role in assisting rail baron Jay
Gould's expansion into Texas. Dodge later became President of the
Fort Worth & Denver Railway. |
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In 1873, the T&P acquired the 65 miles of track and
other assets of the Memphis, El Paso & Pacific out of foreclosure and
began construction east from Sherman toward Paris and Texarkana to connect to
the existing track. Sherman was
chosen as the starting point because rails and other materials could be shipped
there directly from the Port of Galveston on the Houston & Texas Central
(H&TC) Railway main line that had been completed between
Houston and Denison in
late 1872. In 1876, the remaining 90 miles between Paris and Texarkana was
completed of which 65 miles was the rehabilitation of the track built by the Memphis, El Paso & Pacific. This finished the route between Sherman and Texarkana which became
known as the Transcontinental Division of the T&P. By this time, the
T&P's southern route had been completed from Texarkana to Marshall and then
west to Fort Worth.
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Left: 1877 map,
Cobb Digital Map Collection, Texas General Land Office
By
the end of 1877, the T&P had dual main lines out of Texarkana: one west
to Sherman, the other south to Marshall and west to Longview,
Dallas and Fort Worth. There were
connections to St. Louis from Texarkana, and to Shreveport from
Marshall. At Longview, the main line of the International & Great
Northern (I&GN) Railway went southwest to
Austin. The I&GN also had a branch that went to
Tyler and Mineola.
The north / south line on the map through Sherman is the H&TC main line
to Houston.
The T&P had become stuck at Fort Worth; the map shows it
continuing west in a different line style indicating a projected route
but no construction was underway. The T&P had exhausted its
capital and was struggling to obtain additional financing to build the lengthy
distance across west Texas to El Paso. |
By 1880, the T&P still had not progressed beyond Fort
Worth, so rail baron Jay Gould made T&P President Thomas
Scott an offer he couldn't refuse. Gould purchased Scott's T&P stock for $3.5
million and offered to form a construction company to build the remainder of the T&P between Fort Worth and El
Paso. Gould would do this at his own expense in exchange for $40,000 in T&P
stocks and bonds for each mile of track completed. The offer was accepted, and
Gould immediately became the T&P's CEO, effectively if not officially. As
construction was initiated west from Fort Worth, Gould also began building a
line from Sherman to Fort Worth to connect the T&P's northern and southern
routes. By April, 1881, westward track-laying out of Fort Worth had earned Gould a majority interest in the T&P and
he was named
President. By May, the tracks between Sherman and Fort Worth were open with a
midpoint branch to Dallas. By
the end of 1881, Gould had struck a deal with Southern Pacific (SP)
chairman C. P. Huntington to share 91 miles of SP tracks between Sierra Blanca
and El Paso. SP had already reached El Paso from California and its teams were
building eastward toward San Antonio. The T&P built its own yard and depot in El Paso,
and Gould agreed not to attempt further construction beyond El Paso.
Paris was a major stop on the T&P's
northern route, about midway between Sherman and Texarkana. Its population in
1880 was approximately 4,000, making it twice the size of Texarkana and about
two-thirds the size of Sherman. With the T&P northern segment connected to Fort
Worth, Paris benefitted from new passenger service options. Trains from
Fort Worth through Sherman and Texarkana carried Paris passengers to Little Rock and St. Louis. Connections at
Fort Worth provided routes to California via El Paso, and southward to Houston,
Galveston, Austin, San Antonio and Laredo.
Ten years later, the 1890 census showed
that Paris had more than doubled in size to over 8,000, slightly larger than Sherman. Much
of this increase was attributable to Paris' growth as a railroad town.
Paris' importance to railroads had increased
suddenly in
1880 when the St. Louis & San Francisco ("Frisco") Railway
announced it was building tracks to Paris from Monett, Missouri via Fort
Smith, Arkansas and Hugo, Indian Territory (Oklahoma.) This would
establish a third Texas gateway to the Midwest. Texarkana and Denison
were the other two, and both were controlled by Gould.
Right: Problems like
this one delayed the Frisco; construction finally finished in 1888.
(Galveston Daily News, November 10,
1880) |
 |
Though it took several years, the
Gulf,
Colorado & Santa Fe (GC&SF) Railway responded to the Frisco's plan
by building tracks out of Dallas toward Paris in 1886. The project was part of an
agreement wherein the much larger Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (AT&SF) Railway
would acquire the GC&SF as a wholly-owned subsidiary once the line to Paris and two other projects
were finished. The line to Paris was completed
in 1886 and the acquisition
occurred in 1887. The GC&SF continued operating under its own name as a
subsidiary of the AT&SF, but due to the commonality of its parent company's
name, everyone just called it Santa Fe.
The Frisco's Red River bridge opened
south of Hugo in 1888. That same
year, the Frisco sponsored the charter of the Paris & Great Northern (P&GN) Railroad
to complete seventeen miles of track between Paris and the bridge. The
separate charter was necessary to comply with Texas law requiring
railroad companies building tracks in Texas to be headquartered in state. The P&GN
owned the Texas tracks operated by the Frisco but had no other railroad
function. It was formally acquired by the Frisco in 1928.
Santa Fe was not the first to see the
economic potential of the Frisco's plan to establish a Midwest gateway at Paris. The
H&TC envisioned an interchange at Paris
as an alternate means of connecting Houston and
Galveston with St. Louis. The H&TC main line connected at Denison with the
Missouri, Kansas & Texas ("Katy") Railway, but
Gould had been elected Katy President in 1879 giving him control of the
Katy's Red River bridge. H&TC's investors had been looking for places to build traffic-generating
branch lines, so the opportunity to have an alternate route to St. Louis that
did not involve Gould was attractive. The H&TC chartered a new railroad,
the Texas Central (TC) Railway, to accomplish the work. In
addition to a branch toward the Texas Panhandle out of
Waco, the TC started a northeast branch from the H&TC main line at Garrett
in 1882. The tracks
passed through Kaufman and
Terrell but financial issues stopped the work south of Greenville in 1884.
Right:
Besides Paris, interlocking towers in this vicinity were located at
Greenville and
Celeste. Tracks changed ownership over time, so the map does not represent any particular date.
More than half of
the lines on this map are abandoned or out of service. The St. Louis
Southwestern ("Cotton Belt") Railway had lines to Texarkana, Sherman and
Fort Worth. Jay Gould's son Edwin became its President in 1898.
The Paris & Mt.
Pleasant (P&MP) line between the named endpoints was chartered by
local investors and completed in 1912.
SP
had acquired the H&TC in 1883, and soon thereafter, the TC and the H&TC
both went through receiverships. To help settle the TC's bankruptcy, the
eastern branch was sold in 1893 to Hetty Green, a wealthy New York investor who
sent her son Edward H. R. "Ned" Green to run it. He reconstituted it as
the Texas Midland (TM) Railway in 1894 and completed the line
to Paris in 1896. |
 |
Ned Green was only 27 years old when he chartered the
TM to own his mother's Texas rail investments. He immediately built a 4-mile
extension south from Garrett for access to the major H&TC passenger station at
Ennis. (Garrett had been the junction, but it had minimal facilities.) At the
other end of the TM line, Green's choice to build north from Greenville to Paris was
based on the advice of B. F. Yoakum, a
36-year old rising star among Texas railroad executives. Yoakum was Third Vice
President and General Manager of the GC&SF at the time but he would soon become
the General Manager of the Frisco with a move to St. Louis. Green began by procuring rights to
use the Cotton Belt's existing tracks between Greenville and Commerce. From Commerce, the TM
built 37 miles north to Paris, arriving in 1896. Yoakum's advice proved both prescient
and self-serving; the TM's route to Ennis provided an efficient connection
between the Frisco and the H&TC for traffic to points south. Soon, the Frisco, the TM
and the H&TC combined to run first class passenger service between St.
Louis and Houston with the Ennis - Paris segment operated by the TM. In 1921,
Green dropped the Cotton Belt rights and built a TM line between Greenville and Commerce
(now abandoned, the
right-of-way is mostly occupied by Texas Highway 224.)
 |
In July,
1902, the Official Railway
Guide had this Texas Midland ad for Lone
Star Limited passenger trains. The Union Depot at
Paris, a Frisco facility that preceded Paris Union Station, was
one of the stops. The final segment between Houston and Galveston was
operated by the Galveston, Houston & Northern (GH&N), a subsidiary of SP. |
The TM was successful for many years due to the
leadership of "Colonel" Ned Green (Green had adopted the title as early as 1892
when he was in his mid 20s, but it became official in 1910 with an honorary
appointment to the Governor's security staff.) Reputed to have brought the first
automobile to Texas, Green knew nothing about running a railroad. This may
actually have helped
him develop various innovations because his thinking came from a completely
different perspective. Green was the first in Texas to employ dynamos on the
smoke stacks of his locomotives to generate electricity to light TM passenger
cars and electric headlights installed on TM locomotives. North of Kaufman, Green built two
large gravel beds in which he produced burnt ballast. Its hardness and water absorption
properties improved the TM roadbeds through the "black gumbo" soils of east
Texas, enabling faster and smoother passenger travel.
Green's most significant contribution,
however, was his 1903 provision of land and funding
for a test farm to pioneer new cotton varieties and farming methods to combat
the boll weevil which was destroying cotton crops throughout the state. Cotton
was the cream of the Texas freight business, the most valuable commodity moved by the TM.
Under the direction of scientists from the Agricultural and Mechanical
College of Texas (now Texas A&M University) Green's test farm was a
success and ultimately led to the eradication of the boll weevil. It also served
to motivate the Legislature to establish the County Extension Agent program
statewide.
When Hetty Green died in 1916, Colonel Ned inherited half of
her estate and was finally able to marry his longtime girlfriend still living in
Dallas (supposedly because her unsavory reputation kept her away from Kaufman
where the TM was based.) Hetty had opposed the marriage, hence it was postponed
until after her death lest the Colonel jeopardize his massive inheritance (not
that he needed it; at age 24 before being sent to Texas, he had already built a
personal net worth of $10 million with no help from his notoriously stingy
mother.) He continued to own and operate the
TM until 1928 when he sold it to SP and returned to New York. The TM was immediately merged into the Texas & New Orleans (T&NO)
Railroad which had become SP's principal operating subsidiary for Texas and
Louisiana lines. The H&TC had been leased to the T&NO in 1927 and became fully
merged in 1934.
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The Railroad Commission of Texas (RCT) was granted
authority by the Legislature in 1901 to regulate safety at
crossings of two or more railroads (including the power to settle
disputes pertaining to grade separation.) RCT wanted deployment of interlocker technology, already widely used in other states
to improve safety while increasing operational
efficiency for railroads. All grade crossings in Texas were uncontrolled,
hence trains were required by law to make a complete stop
before passing over the diamond. This wasted fuel, water and
time since in the vast majority of instances, there was no conflicting
traffic. In the early years, interlocking plants were controlled manually from elevated
structures -- towers -- where operators had views of the nearby tracks
in all directions. The plants used signals, derails and built-in delay
functions to determine when a train would be allowed to cross a diamond. In 1931, Texas began to allow automatic interlockers
that used train detector circuits to govern the signal systems. RCT also
allowed derail devices to be omitted at automatic crossings.
RCT
could order interlockers for specific crossings, but railroads were also
allowed to solicit permission to interlock any
particular crossing. Although the busy junction of several railroads on the southwest side of Paris would seem
to have been a prime candidate for an early interlocker order from RCT,
none was forthcoming until January 3, 1908.
Left:
The San Antonio Daily Express
of January 4, 1908 reported that RCT had ordered interlocking plants
installed for crossings at Paris, San Antonio and Garland. (The
article mistakenly references the "Galveston, Houston and San Antonio"
railroad which was actually the "Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio"
railroad; it had tracks to both Houston and
Harrisburg.) The last two entries in a
comprehensive interlocker table published by RCT on October 31, 1909
were Garland (Tower
78) and Paris (Tower 79) with operational dates of April 5 and March 29,
1909, respectively. Tower 79 was listed as an electric plant with 32
functions serving the TM, Santa Fe, T&P and P&GN. The third interlocker
in this news item became Tower 105 at San
Antonio. The higher number indicates that its planning did not commence
immediately post-order. Tower numbers were assigned when railroads
contacted RCT Engineering to assert their intent to build an interlocker, thus it should have become Tower
80 had the order been followed. The delay is unexplained; Tower 105
was commissioned by RCT on April 29, 1916. |
Right:
The Bonham News of April 30,
1909 reported that the interlocker at Paris had become fully
operational. RCT's interlocker report published October 31, 1910 changed
the commissioning date to May 27, 1909, but the date of this news item
suggests it should have been April 27, not May.
In 1916, RCT
began reporting which railroad had operational responsibility for each
tower. For Tower 79, it was the T&P. This was usually a good clue as to
which railroad had taken the lead in designing the tower and managing
its construction. The T&P would have been responsible for staffing and
maintaining the tower, its interlocking plant and the associated signals
and derail devices. It would also pay the utilities and buy
all office supplies and maintenance materials. Using a formula specified
in the tower contract, the T&P would allocate the total recurring
expense for staffing, utilities, supplies and materials among the four railroads
on a periodic basis (e.g. monthly or quarterly.) The article at right
uses the the T&P as the subject ("the T&P crosses")
implying that the two operators are T&P employees, consistent
with RCT's reporting in 1916. |
 |
 |
A minimal crossing of two railroads would typically
require a dozen interlocking functions consisting of a home signal, distant
signal and derail in each of the four directions. An interlocking function count
of 32 suggests that tower operators also controlled switches, signals and
derails for exchange tracks. However, the complexity of a junction with four
railroads would have required more functions simply to achieve the normal safety
requirements. There was a TM / T&P exchange track in the southeast quadrant of
the diamond which undoubtedly had switches and signals operated through the
interlocking plant.
A fifth railroad began construction at Paris
in 1909, the Paris & Mt. Pleasant
(P&MP) Railroad. The idea for the P&MP was to connect Paris with the Cotton Belt at
Mt. Pleasant to gain an additional transportation outlet to Texarkana to create
competition for the T&P. Among
local investors, the real impetus was simply to provide transportation into
southeastern Lamar County. In the winter when the black soil mixed with heavy
rain to make the roads impassable, communities were literally cutoff from
reaching Paris for weeks at a time. The townspeople of Pattonville, Deport and
Bogata had long lobbied Paris business leaders for a railroad so they could survive the winter months "when
the mud came". The P&MP began operating as far as Bogata in 1910 and
reached Mt. Pleasant in 1912. Its tracks at Paris approached the vicinity of
Tower 79 to serve various businesses and to exchange traffic with other
railroads, but it was not a direct participant in the cost-sharing for the tower. The P&MP never
handled a significant level of traffic, but it managed to survive until it was
abandoned in 1956.
The T&P and P&MP had passenger depots on the south side of Paris.
For the other three railroads, construction of Paris Union Station to
replace the Frisco depot was motivated by single-train passenger service
to / from St. Louis jointly operated by the Frisco with the TM (Houston)
and Santa Fe (Dallas.) The station opened in 1912 and was located about
0.8 miles north of Tower 79, west of downtown Paris.
Right: Although
the Katy railroad did not have tracks at Paris, it included Paris in a
large library of track charts created by its Office of Chief Engineer in
1915. This chart (Ed Chambers collection) conveys the complexity of the track topology on the
southwest side of Paris. It has been annotated to highlight the five
railroads serving Paris.
The arrows pointing off the bottom of the image near the
southwest corner of the chart are for Santa Fe (left) and the TM
(right), labeled as "To Dallas" and "To Greenville",
respectively. The TM had a lengthy spur proceeding east to serve
businesses across from the T&P station and to connect with the P&MP.
A TM / T&P exchange track was present at the Tower 79 diamond.
Santa Fe and the TM were parallel north to Union Station, but Santa Fe's track continued
past the station and curved northeast to serve businesses in
central Paris. Much of this northern right-of-way has been paved as part
of the city's Trail de Paris. The TM is completely abandoned
but the Santa Fe tracks are intact south of Tower 79 where they curve to
the southwest to serve a business and terminate.
The Genesee &
Wyoming (G&W) subsidiary Kiamichi
Railroad (KRR) operates all of the active tracks in Paris, entering
town on the former Frisco line from Hugo. South of Union Station, its
tracks curve southeast to access businesses near the former T&P station
(which is now a restaurant.) |
 |
 |
Left: The open
area between Paris Union Station and the KRR (ex-Frisco) track west of
the depot (far right) was historically used for passenger tracks (note
platform lighting still in place.) There were also tracks on the
opposite side of the station in the early years. This view is to the
south from the Bonham St. grade crossing. The station was restored in
1997 is owned by the city of Paris. It is used as office space for a
variety of purposes, e.g. the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce.
(Google Street View, May 2024) |
By the early 1930s, railroading had changed
considerably throughout the state with company consolidations, new technology and revised operating
methods.
On May 1, 1930, RCT authorized the
first automatic interlockers in Texas and
simultaneously eliminated the requirement for derails at automated crossings.
Railroads began to examine their manned towers to determine where automatic
plants might be deployed to reduce operating costs. The railroads at Paris decided that Tower 79 was a
good choice for automation, and the T&P took the lead on the project in 1933. A technical article in the July,
1936 edition of Railway Signaling and
Communications explained the rationale for the change:
At present, the traffic on the
Southern Pacific consists of one freight train in each direction daily and a
local passenger train, a light motor. The Santa Fe traffic is the same as the S.
P. as is also the T. & P., which, however, includes a steam passenger train
rather than a motor. The Frisco and the Santa Fe, on the other hand, operate one
through passenger train between St. Louis and Dallas, via Ft. Smith, Ark. and
Paris, and in addition, the Frisco handles considerable yard work in the
vicinity of the interlocking. Automatic operation of the signals is highly
advantageous for these switching operations as the necessity for flagging over
the crossings is obviated. Furthermore, the extent of these operations does not
warrant a manually-controlled interlocking.
Below:
This index map for the 1946 Sanborn Fire Insurance map set of Paris has
been annotated to show the location of Tower 79 and Paris Union Station.
Three railroads are clearly labeled on the map. The Frisco and P&MP have
been added. At lower right, an industry track for the
P&MP extends west to join a connecting track from the T&NO.
 |
Below: This 1957 aerial
image ((c)historicaerials.com) shows Tower 79 casting a distinct shadow across
the T&P tracks. The tower is reported to have been dismantled in 1963,
with remaining interlocker equipment moved to trackside cabinets. The
visibility of trackside utility poles and signal structures at this
angle suggests this was mostly open prairie in 1957.
Below: T&NO
Employee Timetable #33 issued June 2, 1940 explained how to override the automatic interlocker at Paris should it not properly issue a PROCEED indication.
The T&P crossing control box was at the "southwest corner of tower
building" (which was no longer staffed after 1933.) A separate control box for the
crossing of the Frisco spur north of the tower was on a post at the
"southwest intersection" of that crossing. The "StLSF&T" was
"St. Louis, San Francisco & Texas", the Texas subsidiary that owned the
Frisco's tracks in state.
 |
As of 2026, the only rail service to Paris is provided
by KRR using the former Frisco rails out of Hugo. The tracks
were acquired from the Frisco's successor Burlington Northern in 1987.
Service is also provided by KRR southwest of the Tower 79 site to serve a
business along the former Santa Fe tracks. The track terminates there; the Santa Fe line to
Dallas was abandoned between Paris and Farmersville in 1995 and is now used as
a public trail. The T&P line is abandoned east of Paris
towards Texarkana, much of the right-of-way having been converted to a public
trail. In Paris, the former T&P tracks remain intact for switching purposes. To the west, the T&P line is out of service to
Bells. The
tracks remain mostly intact although they're completely overgrown and many of the grade
crossings have been removed. T&P tracks near Bells have been
used for railcar storage in recent years. The TM line from Commerce was abandoned in 1975 and the rails were removed shortly thereafter. The result of all of these abandonments is that
all rail service into Paris now goes through Hugo, Oklahoma.
  |
In January, 2005, Myron Malone took these photos
when he hiked out to the site of Tower 79.
Far Left: This view looks northeast across the Santa
Fe / T&P diamond. The T&P tracks (lower left corner) are out of service
but the Santa Fe tracks (lower right corner) function as an industry
spur.
The T&P tracks pass the line of cedar trees to the right heading east
toward the T&P depot. Tower 79 would have been just out of
view to the right.
Left:
Looking southeast, Tower 79's foundation is located across the diamond just
beyond the short cedar
trees. |
Right: This view is to the north along the Santa Fe tracks. Union
Station is approximately 0.8 miles distant. The T&P line crosses left to right.
Tower 79 was to the right, behind the red sign.
Far Right: The foundation of Tower 79 remains in
place amidst the cedar trees on the southeast side of the diamond. Two
concrete steps for the tower are visible on the far side of the
foundation. Whether these led to the staircase or perhaps an access door
for the lower floor has not been determined. |
  |
  |
Far Left: This is the view of the foundation from its
northwest corner.
Left:
At the south side of the tower foundation, steps and pillow blocks for lever
connections to switches and signals are still present. |
 |
Left: Despite being
overtaken by dense vegetation (in stark contrast to the 1957 aerial imagery
above) telltale signs of additional rights-of-way are
visible near the site of Tower 79 in this south-facing bird's eye view c.2008.
The TM crossing of the T&P is readily visible, and the outlines of the
TM connectors to the T&P and the P&MP can also be discerned. Although
the former T&P tracks remain in place in this image, the diamond has been
removed and debris sits across the tracks east of the crossing. This
marks a significant
change compared to the 2005 images taken by Myron Malone where the diamond
remained intact. The
former Santa Fe
tracks are in use by KRR for a business southwest of the Tower 79 site.
Below: The Tower
79 article in the July, 1936 issue of Railway Signaling and Communications
contained this diagram of the vicinity of the tower. It has been
annotated to highlight the railroads and the location of the tower
(yellow square) which sat between the Santa Fe and TM tracks on the
south side of the T&P.
 |
Above Left: Looking west from
1st St., the track on the left is the T&P main line disappearing into the woods
with tracks still intact. The track on the right is the former Frisco connector
that merged with the Santa Fe track south of Union Station and then curved
southeast across the TM to reach Frisco industrial spurs and the T&P yard on the
south side of Paris. (Google Street View, 2024)
Above Right: The view east from 1st St. is toward
the former T&P yard. The T&P depot at left is now a restaurant. The former
T&P main
line is the rightmost track. At the tree line in the distance, it connects to a former P&MP track off the image to the right
serving two businesses. (Google Street View, 2024)
Below Left: This entire area is overgrown now, but as
recently as this Google Street View captured in 2013, the TM right-of-way was
easily visible in both directions from W. Washington St. This view looks north
toward Paris Union Station 0.4 miles distant.
Below Right: Looking southwest from 7th St.
on the north side of Paris, the former Santa Fe right-of-way has been paved as
part of the Trail de Paris.
