Texas Railroad History - Tower 185 - Diboll

A Crossing of the Texas & New Orleans Railroad and the Southern Pine Lumber Company

Left: This annotated 1963 U.S. Geologic Survey topographic map of Diboll shows the Southern Pine Lumber Co. (SPLC) mill located west of the Texas & New Orleans (T&NO) Railroad main line. The map shows the extensive SPLC trackage on the mill property. Locomotives brought logs to the mill and moved finished products to trunk line railroads for shipment. The dashed blue line shows where a mill tram line was converted to use for outbound shipments of finished wood products. It crossed the T&NO main line and continued northeast to a connection with the St. Louis Southwestern ("Cotton Belt") Railway at Diboll Junction. The solid blue line west of the mill belonged to the Texas Southeastern (TSE) Railroad. TSE moved raw logs to the mill and provided transportation services into areas north and west of Diboll. It was a classic "tap line" -- a common carrier railroad owned by a lumber company.

The Houston East & West Texas (HE&WT) Railway began laying tracks northward out of Houston in 1877. Rails eventually reached Nacogdoches in 1882 and the Louisiana state line in 1885. The HE&WT was built as a narrow gauge railroad but the entire line to Shreveport was converted to standard gauge on July 29, 1894. Five years later, Southern Pacific (SP) bought the HE&WT but allowed it to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary. In 1927, the HE&WT was leased to the Texas & New Orleans (T&NO) Railroad which was to become SP's principal operating company in Texas and Louisiana. In 1934, the HE&WT became fully merged into the T&NO.

Lufkin, the seat of Angelina County, was a major east Texas town along the HE&WT. Twelve miles south of Lufkin, the community of Diboll was founded in 1894 when Thomas L. L. Temple built a sawmill adjacent to the HE&WT tracks, naming the town for landowner who sold him the acreage. Temple incorporated the mill as the Southern Pine Lumber Company (SPLC) and watched it grow substantially over the years. With mergers, acquisitions and buyouts, SPLC became one of the largest wood products companies in the U.S. The mill in Diboll remains active today, presently owned by Georgia - Pacific. The former T&NO line continues to see heavy traffic through Diboll, now owned and operated by Union Pacific (UP.) As was done in the earliest days, UP interchanges railcars with the mill at a siding on the south side of Diboll.

In 1900, Temple chartered the Texas Southeastern (TSE) Railroad to expand rail service to the mill at Diboll and to take advantage of laws governing so-called tap line railroads. Temple also aspired to provide rail service to other mills in east Texas. One of the first TSE projects was to extend an existing SPLC narrow gauge tram line to a trunk line connection that would provide competition for the HE&WT. The track ran east from the SPLC mill into the forest, crossing the HE&WT in the middle of Diboll. TSE took ownership of the right-of-way, converted the track to standard gauge and rerouted it fifteen miles northeast to a connection with the St. Louis Southwestern (SSW, "Cotton Belt") Railway at Homer, east of Lufkin. The switch on the Cotton Belt became known as Diboll Junction and it enabled the Cotton Belt to compete for outbound wood product shipments from the mill. [The Cotton Belt and HE&WT were competitors; this was decades before the Cotton Belt became controlled by SP in the early 1930s.]

TSE expanded north and west from Diboll, eventually owning more than 50 miles of track. It hauled logs to sawmills and carried finished products to trunk line railroads. It also provided limited passenger and mixed freight service. It was a classic tap line railroad. Its General Manager, E. C. Durham, was chosen to speak at a hearing before the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) representing TSE and other tap line railroads. The ICC was investigating which tap lines were legitimate common carrier railroads and which were not. Although the ICC ruling went against TSE and many other tap lines, the ruling was reversed during an appeals process that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. [See Tower 11 for an explanation of the ICC's Tap Line Cases in the context of the Orange & Northwestern Railroad.] In March, 1908, the track from Diboll to Diboll Jct. was sold to SPLC, but the reason for this transaction is undetermined. Over the next two decades, TSE operations changed as it began to focus on other aspects of the lumber business. SPLC locomotives began hauling logs to the Diboll mill, sometimes using TSE's tracks. In 1920, 98% of TSE's freight tonnage came from hauling wood, and 67% of this was logs. By the end of the decade, wood was down to 85% of TSE's freight tonnage, and 75% of this was finished lumber coming out of the mills. TSE also provided passenger service from Diboll to Lufkin via Blix until 1942. In 1939, the Cotton Belt line from Lufkin east to Diboll Junction and beyond was abandoned. Two years later, the SPLC / T&NO crossing at Diboll was interlocked. It was likely being used by SPLC exclusively to haul raw logs to the mill from the forests east of Diboll. By then, longer operating distances for locomotives permitted higher speeds through Diboll on the T&NO as there was no need to stop for fuel or water. The interlocker eliminated unnecessary delays since without it, all T&NO trains had to stop at the crossing. The short duration of the plant's lifeltime suggests that SPLC log traffic ceased when the accessible forest had been cut out. Left:: annotated area map from a larger map set ((c) Mike Walker, Steam Powered Video, 2001)

Right: (Carl Codney collection) This drawing is a standard form that was used by SP for "Levers, Functions and Division of Expense" information for specific interlocking plants, in this case Tower 185. The form shows that the lumber company paid all of the expenses for installation and maintenance of the interlocker. The contract between the T&NO and SPLC was dated May 6, 1941 and the interlocking plant was authorized by the Railroad Commission of Texas (RCT) to begin operations on September 22, 1941. RCT designated the crossing "Tower 185." All interlocking plants were "towers" in RCT's vernacular, regardless of whether a building or any other structure was present. Tower 185 was taken out of service on March 27, 1944 after only two and a half years of operation. The document states that Tower 185 was a "Ground Interlocker". This was a manually operated mechanical lever mounted on a switch stand near the diamond. All lumber trains approaching the crossing would stop prior to reaching the derail. A crewmember would disembark and verify there were no trains in sight on the T&NO tracks in either direction. He would then rotate the lever on the switch stand to lock it into the opposite position. This would clear the derails on the lumber company tracks and cause the home and distant signals on the T&NO to display a STOP indication. When the lumber train had completed crossing the diamond and cleared the opposite derail, the crewmember would lock the lever back into its normal position. This would reinstate the derails on the lumber tracks and assert PROCEED signals on the T&NO, granting unrestricted movements for T&NO trains.

Left: T-20 Hand Operated Switch Stand (image (c) 2009, Union Switch & Signal, Inc.) The D-205 drawing above for Tower 185 notes that the "Operating Machine" was a T-20. The T-20 was not an interlocking plant; it was a heavy-duty, hand-operated switch stand manufactured by Union Switch & Signal (now Ansaldo STS USA). It incorporated a variety of safety features to ensure solid locking, both forward and reverse, for the mechanical devices it controlled (typically switches, but for Tower 185, derails.) It had internal electrical contacts to interface with the railroad's signal systems to indicate whether the devices were fully locked. It would open a signal indication circuit immediately when it detected that the mechanical system had become unlocked, on purpose or accidentally. For Tower 185, the normal locked position was for the derails to be in place mechanically over the rail(s) to prevent a railcar on the SPLC tracks from reaching the diamond. Unlocking the T-20 illuminated the T&NO home and distant signals into a STOP indication. Signals were not needed for the SPLC tracks -- its trains always stopped at the crossing so that a crewmember could operate the T-20.

Above: Looking south, the UP tracks at left proceed toward Houston through the center of Diboll. At right, the former SPLC spur that crossed the T&NO at Tower 185 terminates but the tracks remain intact. The Tower 185 crossing site is behind the camera along the UP tracks to the left. (Google Street View, 2013) Below: Looking north, the utility poles align with the former SPLC track and proceed northeast across the UP tracks past the site of Tower 185. In the early 1940s, the ground lever would likely have been visible near the diamond from this view.

 
Above: The mill continues to make extensive use of locomotives and railcars on plant property. Access to the plant is from a siding along UP's main line south of the mill. The single track in the foreground leads to the mill entrance behind the camera. This view looks south along UP's main line. (Google Street View, 2022) Below: The mill property is fenced; the track enters the mill through a gate located between the two middle brick columns at left. The camera is looking north along the UP main line. There are two other gated track entrances on the plant property. One is for the terminated track near the Tower 185 site. The other is the former TSE track west from the plant toward the Neches River. That track remains intact for approximately six miles and appears to be used solely for railcar storage. (Google Street View, 2022)
 

      Below: Historic photographs of the TSE taken in 1903 and 1907 for American Lumberman, a weekly trade journal (courtesy of The History Center at Diboll via The Portal to Texas History)
 
Above Left: TSE locomotive #3 with a string of boxcars in 1903  Above Right: TSE locomotives #1, #2 and #3 pose for a photo in 1903.  Below Left: TSE #3 has a load of logs about to be released into the mill pond. The sloped platform next to the tracks caused the logs to roll into the pond as they were released from each car.  Below Right: TSE #7 at the mill pond in 1907
 

Special Thanks to Jonathan Gerland, Executive Director of The History Center for assistance in collecting information about Tower 185 and TSE.