Texas Railroad History - Tower 168 - West Livingston
A Crossing of the Houston East & West Texas
Railway
and the Waco, Beaumont, Trinity & Sabine Railroad
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Left: In 1946, Robert W.
Richardson, founder of the Colorado Railroad Museum (CRM) was able to take a ride on
the Waco, Beaumont, Trinity & Sabine (WBT&S) Railway from
Trinity to Livingston in a
Model A Ford modified to
run on rails (known as "WBT&S #1".) Richardson took an 8-mm. film of his day on the WBT&S and
later edited his
footage into a short film. His film has been
converted to video and was made available by CRM to Jason Rose, webmaster for
the website wbtsrailway.net.
This image capture is taken from the video and is facing generally
west-southwest down the WBT&S from the Tower 168 diamond. The passengers
are walking toward tracks in the foreground belonging to the Texas & New
Orleans (T&NO) Railroad, the principal operating company in Texas and
Louisiana for Southern Pacific (SP.) Whether they were
planning to be picked up by the next T&NO train or merely walking into
Livingston is unknown. They had disembarked from a trailer pulled behind the
Model A (barely visible in the distance.) The video shows the Model A
being turned 180 degrees for the return trip to Trinity using a car jack
and a lot of manpower. The trailer was manually pushed onto a nearby
siding and recoupled to the Model A after it passed on the return trip.
Note that the WBT&S south rail at the diamond has been cut
on both sides of the T&NO west rail, i.e. the WBT&S was no longer
capable of crossing the T&NO. The
apparatus with the slanted pole to the right is very likely part of the "ground lever" control used by the Tower 168
plant. Hypothetically, it could still have been in use to set a STOP
signal on the T&NO, perhaps to indicate the presence of passengers at
the diamond. |
In 1877, the Houston East & West Texas (HE&WT) Railway
began construction of a narrow gauge rail line northward from
Houston, passing through the town of
Livingston in 1880. By then, Livingston had been settled more than 30 years with postal
service dating to 1847. The tracks eventually reached Shreveport, Louisiana, a
major riverport near the Texas border. In 1894, the HE&WT was converted to standard gauge and five years
later, Southern Pacific (SP) bought the HE&WT but continued to operate it under
its original name.
The huge growth in commercial timber that occurred in east Texas
in the 1890s also motivated the construction of short-line railroads to bring wood
products from mills to the main line railroads. One of these was the Livingston
& Southeastern Railway built in 1905 to connect the Knox Lumber Co. mill
east of Livingston with the HE&WT. Within eight years, the Knox lumber mill was
closed and the rail line abandoned.
The next rail line into Livingston was the
newly chartered Beaumont & Great Northern (B&GN) which in
1907-08 built a line to Livingston from a connection to the International &
Great Northern (I&GN) Railroad in the town of
Trinity. A few years later, the B&GN
was sold in successive transactions and ultimately became owned by the Missouri, Kansas
& Texas (MK&T, "Katy") Railway. The sale to the Katy was fought in
court by the State of Texas and eventually annulled in a 1914 settlement wherein the Katy
leased the B&GN for 99 years. The lease did not last long; the Katy went
into receivership and the B&GN reverted to its owners when the bankruptcy
ended in 1923 (with a new corporate name for the Katy, the Missouri
- Kansas - Texas Railway.) With its return to independence, the B&GN's owners changed the name to
the Waco, Beaumont, Trinity & Sabine (WBT&S) Railroad and
operated it themselves (but of the four
locations in the name, the railroad only went to Trinity.)
Because the HE&WT had built north / south along the
west side of Livingston, the B&GN could not enter the town from the west
without crossing the HE&WT. In a list of active interlockers dated
December 31, 1930 published by the Railroad
Commission of Texas (RCT) Tower 168 is listed as "Under
Construction" at West Livingston to serve this HE&WT / WBT&S
crossing. The rationale for the timing of the interlocker installation is unknown;
the crossing had existed for nearly 25 years.
In 1927, the HE&WT was leased to the Texas & New Orleans (T&NO) Railroad,
SP's principal operating subsidiary in Texas and Louisiana. This was a precursor
to the
HE&WT becoming fully merged into the T&NO in 1934, at which time its
separate identity
ceased to exist.
Right:
area railroads c.1912, including Groveton, Lufkin & Northern (GL&N);
Trinity & Sabine (T&S); Texas Southeastern
(TSE) |
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A
drawing obtained from SP's Houston office by Carl Codney states that the Tower 168
interlocking was a ground lever plant placed in service on October 15,
1931. The lever controlled two home signals for the T&NO, one in each
direction, and two derails on the WBT&S, one in each direction. The lack of
distant signals on the T&NO implies that its trains were operating at slow
speeds in the vicinity of the crossing. This was due to the presence of the SP
depot just over a mile away in downtown Livingston; trains were slowing to stop
at the depot (northbound) or were accelerating slowly from a stop at the depot
(southbound.) Freight trains that did not stop at the depot were still required
to operate slowly through town due to pedestrians and
nine grade crossings on downtown streets. WBT&S trains
approaching the crossing always stopped at the diamond so that a crewmember could exit the
train and throw the ground lever to present a STOP indication on the T&NO
while clearing the
derails on the WBT&S. Once the WBT&S train had crossed the diamond, the crewmember
would return the lever to its normal position, signaling unrestricted movements
to T&NO traffic and setting the WBT&S derails.
Above Left: The HE&WT
and WBT&S crossed southwest of Livingston, a location off the lower left
corner of this
Sanborn Fire Insurance index map of Livingston from 1927. Above Right: This
SP form shows the functions controlled by the interlocker, two for each
railroad, hence the maintenance expenses were split evenly. (Carl Codney collection)
The Tower 168 installation occurred after the WBT&S had
gone into receivership in February, 1930. During three decades of receivership,
parts of the railroad were gradually abandoned until there was literally nothing
left in 1961 when it ceased to exist. The SP drawing states that Tower 168 was
taken out of service on March 22, 1947, but the image at top of page shows WBT&S
rails cut at the diamond in 1946. RCT records list the WBT&S tracks into
Livingston as formally abandoned in 1949. The former
T&NO line remains in service as a major route for current owner Union
Pacific (UP.)
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Left: (1932 imagery
(c) historicaerials.com) T&NO tracks (pink arrows) and WBT&S tracks
(yellow arrows) crossed at Tower 168 (green circle) with an exchange
track (red arrow) to the southeast. The blue circle marks a grade
crossing where the WBT&S crossed S. Marsh St. (purple arrow.) Railcars
can be seen sitting on a T&NO siding (orange arrow.) The blue arrow
indicates the camera location and direction for this 2008 Google Street
View (below.) Tower
168's location was about 400 ft. beyond the visible grade crossing of
the UP tracks, a crossing not apparent in the 1932 imagery.
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Below: Sanborn maps show the
WBT&S running parallel to and south of Ogletree (upper right corner). The
Ogletree Lumber Co. sawmill was served by the WBT&S about where W. Matthews and
Ogletree intersected. That intersection no longer exists; the sawmill is long
gone, replaced by a city park.
Right: West of Livingston, 1.25 miles of the
WBT&S grade was preserved as a rural road called Wobbly Bobbly Tram Road. This
was
a reference to the local nickname for the WBT&S, "Wobbly Bobbly Turnover and
Stop", an apt description of operations for much of its existence. Sometime
after 2018, the name of the road was changed officially to Chris Brent
Drive. Another 1.4
miles of the right-of-way is preserved as Pridgen Road. The two roads are
linearly aligned but do not connect because there is a gap of just over
a half mile at East Tempe Creek (below.)
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