www.txrrhistory.com - Tower 10 - Dallas

Crossing of the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway and the Houston & Texas Central Railway

The Houston & Texas Central (H&TC) Railway entered Dallas from the south in 1872, the first railroad into this future metropolis. In 1880, the Dallas, Cleburne & Rio Grande Railroad completed a narrow gauge railroad between Dallas and Cleburne that crossed the H&TC, but the new line was immediately abandoned upon completion. The assets were then acquired by the newly chartered Chicago, Texas and Mexican Central Railway which planned to convert it to standard gauge. The conversion was not actually accomplished until after the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe (GC&SF) Railway acquired the line in 1882.

In 1903, Tower 10 became the first numbered electric interlocking in Texas to protect the crossing of the H&TC and GC&SF in south Dallas. On  July 23, 1932, a proposal was submitted by GC&SF to combine Tower 10 with Tower 19, and on September 28, 1932, a letter was sent by the Railroad Commission of Texas (RCT) Engineering Dept. to the Commissioners recommending approval. Tower 10 was near Tower 19, and references in the Tower 19 RCT file to "Interlocker10-19", as well as a detailed interlocking map, lead to the conclusion that even after Towers 10 and 19 were combined in 1933, the interlocking machines were not combined; they were just co-located and they maintained their documentation separately. There are references in the RCT files to "Interlocker 10-19" and a 1961 reference to "Interlockers No. 10 and 22" [Tower 22 being along the Santa Fe line further to the northeast]. Thus, the 1944 listed retirement date of the tower may not correlate with the retirement of the interlocker, and might be a demolition date for the structure. In any event, Interlocker 10 was apparently still being used in 1961.

Historic Maps, Tower 10

Above: The location of Tower 10 is illustrated on the 1922 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Dallas. The Sanborn map shows that the
tower was located on the south side of the diamond. A magnification of the map (below) shows that the "Interlocking Tower" was
a 2-story structure with an outer staircase on the west side of the building.


Location Map Tower 10

Above: Annotated map of Tower 10 and Tower 19 locations south of downtown Dallas. The Dallas
Union Terminal (DUT) Railroad and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) Railroad also had tracks
operating in this vicinity, but the DUT tracks have been removed.
Below: This aerial image facing north shows the current view of the Tower 10 crossing. The remnants of the original
H&TC route are now used as industrial tracks. North (left) of the crossing is a scrap metal facility. The double track is the
Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) light rail line that leads to their yard located just beyond the freeway. Note that the
Sanborn map shows this was also a double track in 1922.

Observations by Frank Fertitta 1/22/2001
Before DART came along I used to go down to that part of town to watch the SP switch the Austin Steel plant and some of the machine shops along Coombs St as well as checking out the Santa Fe operations at their yard east of this location. The SP switcher came out of Miller yard past Belt Junction to the northwest toward Tower 19 and just before it got to the tower it would take the switch to the right that put it on a track parallel to the Santa Fe. Once past the backside of Austin Steel it took the crossover to get to the north side of the Santa Fe tracks and turned to the north on an interchange track onto the original H&TC line behind that scrap metal yard and then back across the diamond to the south to get to the industries along Coombs St. These industries were originally accessed from the west across SP's own bridge across S. Ervay, but that bridge was torn out some time around 1954 necessitating the movements described earlier.


Last Revised: 9/12/2008 JGK - Contact the Texas Interlocking Towers Page.