From page 38, Southern Pacific in Color by David R. Sweetland
[Morning Sun Books, Inc., 1993] photo by Marvin H. Cohen
Crossing of the El Paso & Southwestern and the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio railroads
Tower 6 was the first railroad tower in the El Paso area; authorization for operation was granted by the Railroad Commission of Texas (RCT) on January 23, 1903. It was located at the west edge of town where the El Paso & Southwestern (EP&SW) Railroad and the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio (GH&SA) Railway, a Southern Pacific (SP) property, entered El Paso on parallel tracks. EP&SW would eventually become owned by SP, but in 1903, the railroads were not under common ownership. This fact mandated an interlocking tower for their west El Paso junction. Tower 6 was located on the west side of El Paso Union Depot south of the tracks, but the precise location remains to be determined; Sanborn Fire Insurance maps of the early 1900s do not fully cover this part of El Paso. Only one photo of Tower 6 has been located, but it only shows a distant background image of the tower (see below).
Tower 6 Image
From page 38, Southern Pacific in Color by David R. Sweetland
[Morning Sun Books, Inc., 1993] photo by Marvin H. Cohen
The growth of traffic through Union Depot motivated an additional interlocking to be constructed to control the east entrance to the depot area. On April 23, 1906, a proposal was submitted to RCT to build a new tower for the "east end of the El Paso Union Depot grounds". The proposal was accepted, and the newly designated Tower 66 was constructed and placed in service on November 8, 1906. Unfortunately, the design of the interlocking created more problems than it solved. After only six days of operation, Mr. H. J. Simmons, General Manager of El Paso Union Depot, wrote a letter to RCT requesting modifications to Tower 66, explaining that El Paso Union Depot had "experienced great delays to train and switching movement since the inauguration of the interlocking." This letter is in the Tower 66 file at DeGolyer Library, but there is no follow-on correspondence to explain whether any changes were made. At the time Tower 66 was placed in service, the interlocking plant was in a 40-lever frame containing 15 levers dedicated to 22 switches and 10 locks, 7 levers controlling 12 facing point locks, and 15 train signals controlled by 15 separate levers. This totaled 37 levers with 3 spares in the frame.
Unlike Tower 6, Tower 66 can be found on the 1908 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of El Paso, a portion of which is reproduced below. Tower 66 is the rectangle in the upper left corner of the map between the EP&SW tracks (upper) and the GH&SA tracks (lower), close to the intersection of San Francisco St. and S. Durango St. It is denoted on the drawing as a 2-story "S.P. Signal Ho" (house). This location is confirmed by the interlocking drawing in the Tower 66 file at DeGolyer Library. SP employee timetables from the 1920s list Tower 6 at Milepost 830.9 and Tower 66 at Milepost 830.4. This places Tower 6 approximately one-half mile west of Tower 66.
Tower 66 remained in operation until 1928. On May 18, 1928, SP proposed changes to Tower 66's interlocking plant in a letter to RCT. The changes also remoted the controls for the Tower 66 interlocker into Tower 6, and decommissioned Tower 66 as a manned structure. Presumably the Tower 66 structure was razed soon thereafter, but the fate is unknown. Tower 6 remained in control of Union Depot operations until it was decommissioned in the early 1950s; once again, the fate of the tower structure is not known. Its decommissioning resulted from construction of a new brick tower near Union Depot housing the Union Depot interlocking equipment. This interlocking was designated Tower 196, and is located roughly midway between the former sites of Tower 6 and Tower 66. Because it remains standing today, we have photographs of Tower 196. We do not have any photos of Tower 66, and only a single limited image of Tower 6. If you have such photos or any related information, please contact us.
Recent Photos, Tower 196
photo by Daniel Walford
photo by Gary Bonnie
