Texas Railroad History - Tower 212 - Lockney
A Crossing of the Panhandle & Santa Fe Railway and the Fort
Worth & Denver South Plains Railway
Lockney was founded in 1889 by
citizens from the community of Della Plain searching for a better
source of water. By 1908, Lockney had grown sufficiently
to incorporate as a town. A year later, the Llano Estacado Railway was organized
by the citizens of Floydada to build a railroad to
their town from
Plainview. Plainview was the endpoint of a branch
line that had been built from Canyon in 1907 by the
Pecos & Northern Texas (P&NT) Railway. The P&NT had begun extending that branch
south to Lubbock in 1910. Once grading operations to Floydada commenced, the P&NT
took over the project and completed construction that same year, routing
directly to Lockney before turning slightly to angle toward Floydada a dozen
miles farther southeast. This
acquisition by the P&NT was part of a strategy by the Atchison, Topeka &
Santa Fe (AT&SF) Railway to expand its rail lines into the Texas South Plains,
the farming region near Plainview and Lubbock. The P&NT had been organized by well-known
railroad attorney James J. Hagerman in 1898 to build from Amarillo
to the Pecos River, but in 1901, control of the P&NT had been
acquired by the Panhandle & Santa Fe (P&SF) Railway, a
subsidiary of the AT&SF. The P&SF used the charter of
the P&NT to build numerous lines in the South Plains including
the Plainview - Floydada line. In 1914, the P&NT's rail lines
were leased to the P&SF, which continued to operate them under
lease until 1948 when they were all formally merged into Santa
Fe.
In the mid-1920s, the Fort Worth & Denver City Railway ("City" was
dropped from the name in 1951, so it is mostly known simply as the "FW&D") began
an aggressive push to gain Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) approval for proposed routes onto the South Plains.
In 1927, under a new subsidiary charter, the Fort Worth and Denver South
Plains (FW&DSP) Railroad started construction on a branch from the FW&D main line at Estelline, 16 miles northwest of their major base
at Childress. The line ventured west toward the Caprock Escarpment, requiring
two tunnels to get onto the South Plains above it. The tracks eventually reached
Plainview in 1928 and continued west to Dimmitt that same year. Also in 1928, the FW&DSP built a new line
from
Lubbock to Silverton that crossed the Santa Fe at Lockney. This
line was unusual because neither end connected to an existing FW&D (or
subsidiary) route. It would have been an "orphan line" except that the new FW&DSP
Estelline - Dimmit line (under construction at the same time) crossed in the
middle.
At this
crossing, the tiny community of Sterley arose. Trains from the FW&D main line at Estelline
could proceed west to Sterley and turn south, effective creating a rail
route between Lubbock and Ft. Worth (which was the
southern terminus of that line.)
This became the first efficient "single railroad" route between Ft.
Worth and Lubbock. To take Santa Fe "all the way" from Ft. Worth to Lubbock
would have required transiting far to the south through Temple, although a
shortcut existed at Sweetwater using the Texas &
Pacific main line west out of Ft. Worth (but whether and when this shortcut
might have been used, particularly for passenger traffic, has not been determined.) Suffice to say that the
FW&D viewed the new construction as a boon to commerce between north Texas and
the South Plains, particularly Lubbock and Plainview. Santa Fe
was extremely unhappy with this development (more than you might guess.)
The crossing at Lockney existed by 1928, but it was
uncontrolled, at least, not initially controlled by an interlocker. A 1940 FW&D
timetable shows a gate at the crossing with "Normal position ... against F.
W. D. C. trains." This probably reflects the increase in traffic that
occurred in the late 1930s on the Santa Fe branch line through Lockney. The
Quanah, Acme & Pacific (QA&P) had completed a line onto the South Plains at
Floydada in 1928. To the east, the tracks went to Quanah where a connection to
the St. Louis - San Francisco ("Frisco") railroad provided access to St. Louis
and Kansas City via Oklahoma City. The QA&P tried to force Santa Fe to
interchange transcontinental traffic at Floydada, but Santa Fe resisted,
preferring Frisco interchanges to occur at Avard, Oklahoma. When the QA&P
finally won its case before the ICC in 1938, the Floydada gateway opened and
soon there was substantial traffic running through Floydada and Lockney daily.
Above: Both lines are
abandoned, but vague traces of the crossing at Lockney remain visible in this
north-facing Google Street View from 2013. The Santa Fe right-of-way runs
horizontally right-to-left (toward Plainview) beginning on the white ballast at
the middle of the right edge of the image. It immediately crosses the FW&D
grade at a right angle, about where the ballast initially diminishes. The FW&D
grade exits the image in the bottom right corner toward Lubbock. More prominent
is the outline of a connecting track in the northwest quadrant of the junction.
Its years of existence caused it to become a boundary for the cultivation of the
cotton field visible beyond it. Below Left:
rail map of the vicinity of Lockney
Below Right: This 1957 aerial image ((c)historicaerials.com)
shows what appear to be multiple connecting tracks in the northwest quadrant of
the crossing, one of which has railcars positioned for interchange.
Sometime in the early
1960s, Tower 212 was commissioned for operation at Lockney by the Railroad
Commission of Texas (RCT). Timetables from that era show it as an automatic
interlocker. This was undoubtedly for the benefit of Santa Fe which had begun to
carry four time-sensitive "through trains" daily (two in each direction) that
were exchanged with the QA&P at Floydada. But this only lasted about ten
years. In the early 1970s, Santa Fe and the Frisco agreed to move
their transcontinental connection to Avard, Oklahoma and close the Floydada
gateway for non-local interchange, greatly reducing traffic through Lockney.
But...use
of the QA&P/Santa Fe connection at Floydada did not diminish right
away. About the same time interchanges were diverted to Avard, a major derail on the FW&D between Sterley and Estelline
wiped out one of the two tunnels on that line. The tunnel collapse meant
that extensive and lengthy repairs would be
required to get the Sterley - Estelline tracks back in service. To bypass the
collapsed tunnel, a deal was reached that routed FW&D trains from their main
line at Acme
(at Tower 171 near Quanah) to Lockney via the QA&P and
Santa Fe interchange at Floydada. At Lockney, FW&D trains returned to
their own rails to Lubbock. Trains coming out of Lubbock followed the reverse route. Because the only
connecting track at Lockney was in the northwest corner, westbound FW&D
detours coming into Lockney from Floydada needed to go
far enough west to be able to back up onto the
connecting track and then resume the trip south to Lubbock.
The opposite move was required for eastbound trains.
The FW&D began talks with the Frisco
(which owned the QA&P)
about acquiring the QA&P between Acme and Floydada rather than rebuild the
tunnel. The talks progressed to the point that a deal was within reach. Local officials of the Santa Fe
agreed to grant trackage rights on twelve miles of track between
Floydada and Lockney that the FW&D had been using for detours, rights they
would need before the sale could go through. This
track was now lightly used since Santa Fe and Frisco had moved all of their
interchange traffic to Avard. Everyone agreed
to the deal ... except Santa Fe senior management, not admitting, but apparently still harboring, animosity
a half-century later for
the FW&D's invasion of the South Plains! The deal fell through and the FW&D repaired
their tunnel by "daylighting" what was left of it. The last detour train
was in January, 1975.
Ironically, Santa Fe eventually began to ponder
selling the entire Floydada branch, having been unwilling to grant a dozen miles
of trackage rights on it thirteen years earlier. By this time, the FW&D
was no longer interested and in 1989, the FW&D abandoned all of their South Plains lines
east of Plainview, retaining only the branch from Plainview to Dimmitt. A year
later, Santa Fe sold the Plainview - Floydada line to short-line operator
American Railway Corporation, but it has since been abandoned. Although Lockney-ites
once saw four "hotshot" trains daily carrying transcontinental traffic, today
they have no tracks at all. Only the ghost trains pass through at night.
Above: These snippets
from a 1940 FW&D timetable reveal interesting details of how the
FW&DSP's two branches operated. The construction of the two lines was
reported in 1928 to RCT as being from "Estelline to Dimmitt" and from
"Lubbock to Silverton". "Plains Jct." is a proxy for Estelline - the
junction was 0.3 miles northwest of the Estelline depot. The timetable
identifies the Plains Jct. and Lubbock Subdivision (left)
as covering the eastern segment of the Estelline - Dimmitt line and the
southern section of the Lubbock - Silverton line. There was a gate at
"P&SF Crossing C" in Lockney, noted elsewhere as lined against the FW&DSP. The western part of the Estelline - Dimmitt line and the
northern part of the Lubbock - Silverton line were listed as the Silverton & Dimmitt Subdivision (right.) |
Below: Sterley was critical to the FW&DSP's
whole operation on the South Plains. The connector for Lubbock traffic
in the southeast quadrant is no surprise, but the yard also handled
Silverton traffic as evidenced by the connector in the northeast
quadrant. The lack of an apparent northwest connector suggests that all
Silverton traffic went through the yard first.
((c)historicaerials.com, 1957)
Below: Faint traces of
the FW&D remain in Sterley. (Google Earth, 2016)
 |
Above: This Google Earth image
(2016) of Lockney has been annotated to show rail locations. The Santa Fe
right-of-way (blue arrows) from Plainview (to the left) to Floydada (to the
right) crossed at an angle across the south part of the town. The FW&DSP
right-of-way (yellow arrows) crossed on a northeast/southwest heading (Sterley
to the north, Lubbock to the south), and made a slight bend as it passed through
Lockney. The Tower 212 interlocker controlled the crossing (red circle) and
perhaps the adjacent connector (green arrow.) It's apparent from the image and
from Depot St. being nearby that the Santa Fe depot (pink rectangle) was
trackside (below left) near
the main highway (now U.S. 70.) What's less apparent is that there was also a
FW&D depot (orange rectangle) along Main St. on the north side of town, with its
foundation still clearly visible (below right.) Both depots
were a mile from the Tower 212 crossing.
