Texas Railroad Interlocking Tower Home Page
Direct Links to
Numbered Interlockers
History of Interlocking Towers in
Texas
Texas Railroad
History Web Site
Searchable Database of Links
to Tower Pages or
Atlas of Texas with
Clickable Links to All Tower Pages
(courtesy abandonedrails.com)
Welcome to the Texas Railroad Tower Web
Site!
This website is an effort to document every known interlocking plant
constructed in the State of Texas. An interlocker is a mechanical system
used to protect trains from collisions where two railroads cross at grade. Many
of the interlocking plants were located in structures called towers and manned
by railroad employees 24 hours per day 365 days per year from the time they
opened until they were abandoned or replaced by automatic interlocking plants.
In 1901, the Twenty-seventh Texas Legislature passed a law regulating the
mode of crossing between railroads at grade. This law required that all trains
either come to a complete stop before proceeding over an at-grade crossing, or
an interlocking plant must be installed to control traffic. This law also
required towers to be numbered. Each tower was issued a number in the order that
it was approved by the Railroad Commission of Texas. The Railroad Commission of
Texas was the arm of state government regulating railroads in the state. The
numbering of towers is not connected to the year it was authorized to operate.
On the following web pages, you will find the "all-time" list of numbered
Texas interlocking towers. As this site develops, we hope to have one or more
photos of each interlocking tower. We plan to include maps to show the location
of each crossing and stories explaining the unique operation of each tower.
We have drawn on published resources to compile this list. The main source
for this list is Dec. 30 1993 issue of "The Clearance Card" published by the
Southwest Railroad Historical Society, operators of the
Age of Steam Museum in Dallas, Texas. Published Railroad Commission of Texas
data for towers stops at Interlocker 170 in their
Annual Report for the year 1931. In subsequent years the Railroad Commission
ceased publishing the annual list of interlocking towers. Research to bring the
list up to the total 215 towers was done in 1986 and 1987 by William J. Neill,
who was the editor of "The Cross Tie", an employee magazine published for the
San Antonio Division of the Southern Pacific Railroad.
We will also need your support to grow and expand the data we have on Texas
interlocking towers. We need you photographs, your data on when the towers
ceased to be used, why they ceased to be used, and how the railroads used them.
We will try to diligently document where the photos and information for each
tower came from. We prefer scanned photograph in "jpg" format, but we can also
scan your photos if you are willing to loan them to us.
We also believe there were many railroad crossings at grade which were never
assigned an interlocking number by the Railroad Commission of Texas. As a side
project to this effort, it would be interesting to document the location of
other "diamonds" or at-grade crossings of railroads which were never assigned a
number. Please send us any information you may have on such crossings.
The official records of the Railroad Commission
of Texas for all interlockers in the State of Texas are kept at
DeGolyer Library on the campus of
Southern Methodist University. There is
a wealth of information contained in these records which will
prove a great asset in documenting all of the interlockers in
the state. Each interlocker has its own folder which generally
contains the original application from the railroads, including
blueprints of the interlocking plant. There is also correspondence
between the RRC and railroads as changes were made over the years.
About This Site
Contact Us - Should you have any questions, additional
information, photos, corrections, or suggestions, please contact
us.
Texas Towers Webmaster - Jim King
www.txrrhistory.com Webmaster - Myron Malone
Contributing Editor - Carl Codney
Numbered Towers Still Standing in Texas
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