Crossing of the International - Great Northern (I-GN) Railroad and the St. Louis Southwestern (Cotton Belt) Railway
When the International Railroad bypassed the original site of Jacksonville in 1872, the townspeople reacted by relocating the town two miles east to be on the railroad. A year later, the International merged with the Houston & Great Northern Railroad to form the International - Great Northern (I-GN) Railroad, and by the end of 1873, the combined railroad operated three major rail segments: Longview to Palestine via Jacksonville, Palestine to Hearne, and Palestine to Houston. The excellent rail connections provided by the I-GN helped Jacksonville to grow and become the center of agricultural business in the area. It also attracted more railroads, beginning with the Rusk Transportation Company, which built a 17-mile wooden tram railroad from Rusk to Jacksonville in 1875. The wooden rails were a failure, causing the Rusk Transportation Company to enter bankruptcy. The remnants of this tram road eventually became the property of the Kansas & Gulf Short Line Railroad in 1881, which used portions of the tram right-of-way in completing construction of a new railroad between Rusk and Tyler via Jacksonville in 1882. Eventually, this line became the property of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, commonly known as the "Cotton Belt".
The crossing of the I-GN and Cotton Belt railroads was close to the yards of both railroads in Jacksonville and probably did not need to be interlocked, operating instead under "yard limits" rules. In 1931, this changed (for reasons that remain to be determined), and the crossing was interlocked. It is not known whether this was a cabin interlocker or a manned tower. Although Railroad Commission files list it as a manual interlocker, a designation generally used for manned towers, a crossing of this type in this timeframe would almost certainly have been a cabin interlocker. The April, 1931 edition of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map does not identify any signal towers in the vicinity of the crossing, although there is a small, unidentified one-story structure (cabin?) near the crossing. If you have a historic photo of this crossing or any other relevant information, please contact us.
In 1902, the Texas & New Orleans (T&NO) railroad built through Jacksonville as part of an agreement with the State of Texas to complete a line between Dallas and Beaumont. The T&NO crossed the Cotton Belt in south Jacksonville at a location that eventually became Tower 201. The T&NO also crossed the I-GN in Jacksonville, but a trestle was used, so no interlocker was necessary.
Location Photo, Tower 176
Above: The I-GN tracks are now owned by Union Pacific at the former site
of Tower 176. The photo was taken facing southeast; the Cotton Belt crossed the
I-GN on a similar heading.
Below: The bridge abutments are still visible where the T&NO crossed the I-GN on
a trestle in west Jacksonville.
Satellite Image, Tower 176 Location
A control cabinet (possibly the same one seen in the top photo) is
visible as a white dot at the location of the former Tower 176 crossing. The
ex-I-GN tracks remain in use by Union Pacific on a southwest/northeast
alignment. The Cotton Belt tracks survived until abandonment in 1991, recent
enough that faint traces of the right-of-way are still detectable in the image
along a southeast/northwest alignment. The T&NO was abandoned through
Jacksonville ten years earlier, although Southern Pacific retained 2.4 miles of
former T&NO trackage at that time to continue serving customers via the Cotton
Belt tracks. By that time, both railroads had long been absorbed into the
Southern Pacific system.
Location Map, Tower 176
