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.
