Post by SSW9389 on Apr 22, 2009 5:16:40 GMT -5
Jimmy Barlow posted this on Railspot yesterday. The link leads to some T&NO track charts. I personally was interested in the old Texas Midland side of things in the Dallas 1938 charts. I found Commerce, Texas at about page 118 or so.
Ed
hope this isn't old hat to everyone, but Jim King has clued me in to a
very interesting stash of historical SP information: the T&NO Archives
located at <http://tno-archives .tnorr.com/>. (Though there are subsequent
pages therein, I cannot see URL's for anything other than the home page.)
The Track Profiles seem to cover every SP line that's ever existed in LA
and TX.
But what I found most intriguing was the Side Track Records, which are TX
only. You can look thru the list and select a year and division that
includes places of interest. If you're lucky, your choice will have an
index page(s) that cross-refs each locality to the page its track diagram
is on. If you're not lucky, there will be no index and you'll have to open
all the pages to see what's on them. But what the heck. (One thing I had
to keep reminding myself of, is that dashed lines represent other railroads
or private owners, NOT ABANDONED LINES.)
Those track diagrams can be VERY revealing! For example, Dallas Division
1938 shows the former Houston & TX Central from Cypress (just n/w of
Houston) all the way to Denison, including the branches from Bremond to
Waco, Garrett to Ft. Worth, and the former TX Midland Ennis-Paris. Index 1
is definitely where you want to start. It sheds new light on places I've
explored in the past--often with inconclusive results--such as Sherman,
Denison, Paris, Greenville, Ennis, etc. And speaking of Ennis...
...I've long thought that the "end" of the ex-TX Midland is now a dead-end
industrial lead, crossing NE Main at the intersection of Arnold where it
then ties in to UP yard trackage (there used to be a wye there). This is
8-9 blocks _north_ of the former HTC roundhouse site. But if you look
closely at pages 41 and 102 for the Dallas Division 1938, it shows a
_second_ TM-HTC connection _south_ of the roundhouse. In fact, south of
the HTC depot and _all_ Ennis yard tracks/spurs, which would put it south
of downtown! Page 102 labels this southmost connection as TM "M.P. 0.00,"
and shows the "Old T.M.M.L." (Main Line?) paralleling the HTC to the east
up to the other connection (with the wye), altho the old main thru town
looks to be abandoned. Trying to find this on modern aerial photos, I can
see what looks like an abandoned r-o-w swinging to the east side of today's
UP right where Creechville Rd crosses, which is at the south end of SW Main
and a whopping TWO MILES south of the other TM connection (wye). If this
is indeed where TM mp 0 was located, it appears (tho impossible to say for
sure) it ran in the blocks between Breckenridge and Kaufman Streets north
to the wye area.
An amusing find (p. 86A) was a station labeled "Narcotic Farm" at mp 47 of
the Ft. Worth branch. Today, that's in the Forest Hill section of s/e Ft.
Worth, and isn't that still a drug hotspot?? (Now we know why!)
But what took the cake for me personally was found in the _1926_ Dallas
Division records. (Alas, this one has no index. For anyone hunting the
Mexia-Nelleva Cutoff, abandoned 5 years later, it's on pp. 81-89.) For
right there on page 63 (Dallas terminal), coming off the Ford Motor Track,
is the J. Barlow Track! (That's fitting, considering my first car was a
'69 Ford Torino GT.) Page 68 clarifies it as the "J. Barlow Chem.
[Chemical?] Track," 107 feet of 60# rail and 10 feet of 56#. So you see,
there is a prototype for Dave Hawkins's occasional referrals in this
yahooGroup to certain Dallas-area trackage as the "Jimmy Barlow
Wye"! :-))))))
JB himself
Ed
hope this isn't old hat to everyone, but Jim King has clued me in to a
very interesting stash of historical SP information: the T&NO Archives
located at <http://tno-archives .tnorr.com/>. (Though there are subsequent
pages therein, I cannot see URL's for anything other than the home page.)
The Track Profiles seem to cover every SP line that's ever existed in LA
and TX.
But what I found most intriguing was the Side Track Records, which are TX
only. You can look thru the list and select a year and division that
includes places of interest. If you're lucky, your choice will have an
index page(s) that cross-refs each locality to the page its track diagram
is on. If you're not lucky, there will be no index and you'll have to open
all the pages to see what's on them. But what the heck. (One thing I had
to keep reminding myself of, is that dashed lines represent other railroads
or private owners, NOT ABANDONED LINES.)
Those track diagrams can be VERY revealing! For example, Dallas Division
1938 shows the former Houston & TX Central from Cypress (just n/w of
Houston) all the way to Denison, including the branches from Bremond to
Waco, Garrett to Ft. Worth, and the former TX Midland Ennis-Paris. Index 1
is definitely where you want to start. It sheds new light on places I've
explored in the past--often with inconclusive results--such as Sherman,
Denison, Paris, Greenville, Ennis, etc. And speaking of Ennis...
...I've long thought that the "end" of the ex-TX Midland is now a dead-end
industrial lead, crossing NE Main at the intersection of Arnold where it
then ties in to UP yard trackage (there used to be a wye there). This is
8-9 blocks _north_ of the former HTC roundhouse site. But if you look
closely at pages 41 and 102 for the Dallas Division 1938, it shows a
_second_ TM-HTC connection _south_ of the roundhouse. In fact, south of
the HTC depot and _all_ Ennis yard tracks/spurs, which would put it south
of downtown! Page 102 labels this southmost connection as TM "M.P. 0.00,"
and shows the "Old T.M.M.L." (Main Line?) paralleling the HTC to the east
up to the other connection (with the wye), altho the old main thru town
looks to be abandoned. Trying to find this on modern aerial photos, I can
see what looks like an abandoned r-o-w swinging to the east side of today's
UP right where Creechville Rd crosses, which is at the south end of SW Main
and a whopping TWO MILES south of the other TM connection (wye). If this
is indeed where TM mp 0 was located, it appears (tho impossible to say for
sure) it ran in the blocks between Breckenridge and Kaufman Streets north
to the wye area.
An amusing find (p. 86A) was a station labeled "Narcotic Farm" at mp 47 of
the Ft. Worth branch. Today, that's in the Forest Hill section of s/e Ft.
Worth, and isn't that still a drug hotspot?? (Now we know why!)
But what took the cake for me personally was found in the _1926_ Dallas
Division records. (Alas, this one has no index. For anyone hunting the
Mexia-Nelleva Cutoff, abandoned 5 years later, it's on pp. 81-89.) For
right there on page 63 (Dallas terminal), coming off the Ford Motor Track,
is the J. Barlow Track! (That's fitting, considering my first car was a
'69 Ford Torino GT.) Page 68 clarifies it as the "J. Barlow Chem.
[Chemical?] Track," 107 feet of 60# rail and 10 feet of 56#. So you see,
there is a prototype for Dave Hawkins's occasional referrals in this
yahooGroup to certain Dallas-area trackage as the "Jimmy Barlow
Wye"! :-))))))
JB himself