Texas Railroad History - Tower 89 and Tower 139
- Houston
Crossings of the Galveston,
Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway with the International & Great Northern and the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe railroads
Historic Photo, Tower 139 (John W
Barriger III National Railroad Library)
Above: John W. Barriger III
took this photo of the north face of Tower 139 from the rear platform of his
business car as he was leaving Houston in the early 1940s. His
International & Great Northern (I-GN) train is northbound on the Houston, Belt & Terminal (HB&T)
North Belt, having just departed Union Station. The
counterweight of HB&T's draw bridge over Buffalo Bayou is raised indicating that the bridge is down
and the tracks are in place, unsurprising since Barriger's train has just passed over it. From this view, the
former tracks of the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway, now owned by
the Texas & New Orleans Railroad, pass in front of Tower 139, crossing the HB&T
at a right angle near the bridge.
Although the
track to Barriger's immediate left merges onto the I-GN main line about 100
yards to the east, that route was used primarily for freight. Instead,
Barriger's train remains on the North Belt curving slightly to resume a due
north heading. He will soon pass Tower 26
and Tower 71 as he proceeds
to Tower 80. There, his train will transition
to the I-GN main line for his trip to Palestine (his destination evidenced by
subsequent photos in this sequence from the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library.)
A document in the
archives of the Railroad Commission of Texas at DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist
University explains that Tower 139 was built as a replacement for Tower 89, but
Tower 89 remains a mystery with its construction, location and ultimate fate
unknown.
Towers 89 and 139 in Houston present an interesting
mystery that began in 1912 when Tower 89 first appeared in the list of
authorized interlockers published by the Railroad Commission of Texas (RCT). In
a table dated October 31, 1912, Tower 89 is identified as a 12-function
mechanical interlocker serving a junction of the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe
(GC&SF) Railway and the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio (GH&SA) Railway in
Houston. Although no operational date was listed, this was not uncommon.
Sometimes a tower was scheduled for a final RCT inspection, but was not yet
commissioned at the time the report was printed (for example, Tower 90
in the same report.) In the next two annual reports, tables dated October 31 for
the years 1913 and 1914 continued to list Tower 89 with no operational date.
Beginning with a table dated October 31, 1915, Tower 89 was completely omitted
from the list. Tower 89 reappears in a list dated
December 31, 1919, but only in a footnote identifying interlockers that have been "Abandoned on account of
removal of crossing". Tower 89's commissioning date is reported
vaguely as "1912" whereas the other abandoned towers have
precise dates. Tower 89 continued to be described this way through RCT's final
tower list published at the end of 1930.
So...where was Tower 89 and what happened to it? There
were only two Santa Fe/GH&SA crossings in Houston. One was at Tower 81;
the other was immediately north of Santa Fe's bridge over Buffalo Bayou. In 1912, the GH&SA was a major
component of Southern Pacific (SP) and had not yet been
merged into the Texas & New Orleans (T&NO) Railroad (later to become SP's primary operating
company for Texas.) One of GH&SA's tracks was
an east/west line along the north bank of Buffalo Bayou that ran eight miles
from Clinton to downtown Houston. Close to downtown, the GH&SA crossed
tracks of the International & Great Northern (I-GN)
and the Santa Fe a hundred yards apart. The GH&SA connected into other SP railroads
near Tower 108 to reach SP's passenger station.
The Santa
Fe track crossed by the GH&SA was a spur
built sometime prior to 1890 to provide a connection from Santa Fe's yard
south of downtown to SP's yard north of
Buffalo Bayou. Sometime around 1907, Santa Fe transferred
operation of this spur to the Houston, Belt & Terminal (HB&T) Railway. HB&T
had been created in 1905 by four railroads, one of them Santa Fe, to provide
switching services around Houston. Apparently, the operating agreement included
HB&T paying to replace Santa Fe's bridge over Buffalo Bayou. This was accomplished with
a new single-leaf steel bascule draw bridge in 1912. The spur, however, remained owned by Santa Fe, and
accordingly, Santa Fe was
listed as one of the railroads that crossed at Tower 89. While it certainly
appears that this crossing at the north end of the bridge was Tower 89's
location, the letter below dated July 29, 1929,
seventeen years later, shows that neither RCT nor SP knew
for sure where Tower 89 was located nor what happened to it!
Above: This letter to RCT's
Chief Engineer from T&NO's Signal Engineer, R. W. Meek, is the only item in the
Tower 89 file at DeGolyer Library. It suggests that although Tower 89 might have
been built without an interlocker, construction of Tower 139
occurred later to provide an interlocker for the same location.
Below: This image from the
1907 Sanborn Fire Insurance index map of Houston has been annotated to show the
rail lines on the north bank of Buffalo Bayou and the site that eventually
hosted Tower 139. Yellow lines are various SP railroads, red
lines are I-GN, the purple line is the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT), and the green
line is the H&BT which was operating the original Santa Fe spur to the
north.
T&NO Signal Engineer R. W. Meek's letter references "Buffalo Bayou, Tower 139"
leaving no doubt about that tower's location, confirming its identity in
Barriger's photo (the tower number placard in the photo is visible as three
digits but insufficiently legible under magnification to verify the number.)
The style of the tower indicates Tower 139 was
an SP design, resembling numerous other SP towers in Texas (e.g.
Tower 21, Tower 95,
Tower 100.) Since Meek was SP's engineer responsible for "...Interlocking
Reports." to RCT and his offices were in Houston, he was undoubtedly
familiar with the design and operation of
Tower 139 which had opened only seven months earlier. Meek's reference to Tower 89's
location, "...this plant was at Maury Street, crossing of T&NO, I-GN and
GC&SF", plainly asserts that Tower 89 "...was at...",
i.e. actually built, at a Maury St. site. In the vicinity of Buffalo Bayou, such
a location would have been about a thousand feet west of where Tower 139 was
ultimately built. The above index map does not do justice to the complex jumble
of tracks in the area between the bayou and the streets located to the north.
Individual maps verify that I-GN had tracks in this area west of the main line. The detailed maps
show no structures that could be interpreted as signal towers, but
this 1907 Sanborn Map series was drawn approximately five years before the
purported construction of Tower 89.
Meek asserts that "Buffalo Bayou, Tower
139 was placed in service at this location." This is confusing because
"...this location..." was described as "...Maury Street...",
but Tower 139 was a thousand feet east of Maury Street (and closer to at least
three other streets.) It is possible that "...this
location..." meant the "functional location", i.e. the place controlling
the same set of switches and signals that Tower 89 would have managed. In that
interpretation, Tower 139 was doing the same job as Tower 89, but was built at
a slightly different location. As to why were there no records of Tower 89's interlocker
at RCT, Meek supplies the straightforward answer: "Plant was never
constructed...". This raises two questions. What happened to prevent the
interlocking plant from being constructed? And was there some sort of
railroad structure actually built "...at Maury Street." that was originally planned to host the Tower 89 interlocker?
There was a Maury Street location that
became interlocked as
Tower 207 in 1956, but it can be dismissed
as a possibility very quickly: in 1912, it would not have involved GH&SA, Santa Fe or I-GN,
and the site was at least a half mile from where Tower 139 was built. This was
not the
"Maury Street" location Meek was referencing.
Notwithstanding
Meek's identification of the location as
"Maury Street",
might there have been a structure
to house the Tower 89 interlocking plant that was, in fact, built at the future
Tower 139 site as Meek asserts? Can a potential tower structure be found at this location on
Sanborn Maps after 1912? The answer is Yes. Four years
before
Tower 139 was commissioned, the 1924 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Houston (below
left) shows a structure in precisely the same location. Under magnification
(below right), the structure
is revealed as a two-story "OFF." (office) with a door on the east end. Sanborn
Map interpretation sources claim that in general, the 'A.' symbol indicates
"Auto House or private garage". Why would someone build an "office" on railroad
property near a bridge and two crossing diamonds in the exact same spot that
an interlocking tower was later constructed? And why would it be two stories
with a "private garage"?
Rather than an "office", wouldn't it be more
likely that this structure was built to serve an obvious railroad purpose?
Yes, but perhaps not for housing an
interlocker. The more pressing need was to provide
an office and a temporary residence for the HB&T bridge tender on duty to raise
and lower the bridge. HB&T would have needed some sort of facility (in time
for the bridge to become operational in 1912) to host the
bridge tenders for this very busy track on a 24/7 basis (hence a potential upstairs living area and a
garage.) Perhaps in planning for a bridge tender's quarters there was discussion
among the railroads of also installing an interlocker to manage the adjacent
Santa Fe/GH&SA grade crossing? There are lots of
issues...cost, space, operations, staffing...that could have derailed a planned
interlocker. In particular, tower expenses were normally shared among the
railroads on a weighted function basis, so perhaps SP did not want the
incremental cost of managing the bridge incorporated into the tower's collective
expense. The bridge served HB&T alone, and its operational costs would be borne
entirely by HB&T if no interlocker was present. Furthermore, HB&T needed the
interlocker much more than SP. HB&T's North Belt had become a busy main track
whereas the GH&SA line was a secondary route. Due to SP's substantial network of
industry tracks in the area, their trains were unlikely to be moving at speed,
hence the time and energy cost of stopping at a non-interlocked crossing was
relatively insignificant. SP might simply have backed out of the deal.
The GH&SA tracks were laid c.1876 and the Santa Fe tracks arrived no sooner
than c.1884. As the second railroad, it would have been Santa Fe's
responsibility to establish the interlocking tower. Hence, to the extent it ever
existed, the original Tower 89 interlocker documentation might have been held by
HB&T or Santa Fe. Tower 139 was clearly an SP structure, presumably by mutual
agreement with Santa Fe. So, it seems likely that the building that existed in 1924 was razed
before (or perhaps contemporaneous with) SP's construction of Tower 139. In
theory, the 1924 building could have been the original structure built for Tower
89. If so, then it was either razed for the new SP tower, or it was an existing
SP tower structure re-used to host the Tower 139 interlocker. If it was razed,
then it doesn't matter who built it, and Meek might not have known its history.
But if it was, in fact, the Tower 89 building and they elected to install the
Tower 139 interlocker into it, Meek should have known; it opened only seven
months before his letter was written. But in that case, Meek would not have
needed to explain that Tower 89 was "...at Maury Street." RCT knew the
location of Tower 139; if it was in the original Tower 89 structure, Meek could
have just said so.
Regardless of when SP's Tower 139 structure was built,
surely Meek's reference to the Tower 89 site as "Maury Street." and his assertion that "...Tower
139 was placed in service at this location.", which was three
streets and a thousand feet away, cannot both be correct? Or
can they? Notice that if Meek had
penned "Mary Street." instead of "Maury Street.", only one letter different, his description would be entirely
correct. Mary Street was the right-of-way that Santa Fe used north of Buffalo
Bayou and it was the street closest to where Tower 139 was ultimately built. Perhaps
Meek's typist, familiar with "Maury Street." but not with "Mary Street.",
misread Meek's handwriting, and he did not notice the error when signing the
letter? But if that were true, then why bother to describe where Tower 89 was
located at all? It would be simpler to just state that Towers 89 and 139 used
the same building. That is, unless Tower 89's Mary St. location was slightly
different than Tower 139's location. Yes...it's a mystery.
Tower 139 first appears in RCT annual reports in 1929 as a 36-function
electric interlocker that opened on December 20, 1928
involving HB&T, T&NO and I-GN.
By the time of the Barriger photo (~ 20 years after the 1924 Sanborn map), it appears
that only a single track (the original GH&SA line, now owned by T&NO) was crossing the HB&T at this junction.
The I-GN
reference likely indicated that Tower 139 was designed to control the I-GN/T&NO crossing a short distance
to the east (which it ultimately did in later years.) RCT files state that Tower 139 took over
the Tower 5 interlocker controls in 1940, but we do not know how much beyond
that date Tower 139 survived as a manned tower, nor has the ultimate fate of the
tower structure been determined.
Below: With north to the
left, HB&T's 1974 track chart for Tower 139 (interlockers 139-A and 139-B)
shows the location of the equipment bungalows that replaced the original tower.
(track chart courtesy Neil Mackay)
Tower 139 Vicinity, Early 1960s
Above Left: This image is an excerpt from an undated photo in the Texas Dept. of
Transportation
archives. The photo is probably from late 1960 or early 1961 based on the
freeway construction
in progress. The Tower 139 "bungalow" (as referenced on HB&T track charts)
appears to be
visible near the crossing. Above Right: A similar photo taken at the same time but facing northeast
shows the Tower
139 "bungalow" structure more
clearly.
Below Left: The 139-B bungalow in the above chart is
visible as a traditional cabin interlocker near the utility pole to the left of
the diamond of this I-GN/T&NO
crossing located on the north bank immediately east of the bridge. This
image is from the same TxDOT archive photo facing
northeast that shows Tower 139. Below Right:
defaced historical plaque for HB&T's bridge.
Site Photos, Tower 139 (Jim King, December, 2006)
Above: The nearly 100 year old HB&T steel bascule bridge remains intact across Buffalo
Bayou, hidden from the public by the maze of freeways
crossing
overhead. The original Tower 139 was probably located in the foreground of
this photo. There was no evidence of a foundation or
structure apparent at the site.
Note the minimal clearance between the top of the rotation arm for the bridge and the freeway overhead.
Clearance issues required the massive
counterweight structure to be dismantled. Rather than discard it, it was
preserved on a new concrete
foundation surrounded by a barbed-wire fence (below)
near the bridge. Thanks to John Davis (pictured) for providing transportation to
this
and other tower sites in the Houston area!
Location Map - Tower 139
Above: This map shows the location of Tower 139 relative
to the roads and freeways that have been built in its vicinity. The HB&T line
was abandoned c.1991 to make room for the expansion of US 59, but the single
leaf bascule bridge was preserved as a historic structure. To replace the
abandoned line, HB&T
double-tracked Missouri Pacific's former I-GN line and added a new crossing near
Tower 26 to
rejoin the existing HB&T tracks north of Tower 26.
