I'm just back from Texas after a quick vacation. I was driving the streets, listening to real estate agents talk about the city, playing local radio (101.7 - The Patriot ... in The Big Country), and looking at historical features, including railroads and old roadbeds. Leafing through The Flashlight from 1960 - the Abilene High School yearbook - was another interesting bit of research.
Of course, I did all this virtually and it was an enjoyable and refreshing break from my usual ... 'area of specialization'.
Gathered together below are materials which I hope might be helpful or interesting for Abigail of the Abilene Preservation League.
The Abilene Railroad Festival is scheduled for 12-13 September 2025.
... At the link below, you can see some of the League's success in preserving and restoring some of Abilene's unique heritage and architecture.
Abilene Preservation League website
My focus is on the Texas & Pacific Railway because Abilene sprang up on its mainline from New Orleans to El Paso, Texas. There were other railroads serving Abilene and we'll see a couple of them in passing.
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This post has been a welcome opportunity to follow-up on a childhood interest ...
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| from: Railway Annual No 3; 1954; Kalmbach. |
This magazine was around our house from my earliest days. As a preschooler, I was familiar with CNR steam locomotives in person, and CPR and US locomotives via magazines and books.
To pre-literate me, this Texas & Pacific Railway, Texas-type always looked identical to my favourite CNR engines - with the Elesco feedwater heater perched high on its 'brow'.
It was later a surprise to learn how far this locomotive was from my native Montreal!
Incidentally, this magazine is now 71 years old. The first locomotive of this type was 29 years old when this type was featured on the cover. So every time you see a Texas and Pacific Texas-type locomotive, consider that the first one was built exactly a century ago.
A locomotive 'type' is generally determined by its 'wheel arrangement' ...
Simplified: The 'pilot' wheels help guide the engine around curves, the 'driving' wheels apply motive power to the rails, the 'trailing truck' supports the firebox. So, the Texas type side view (farther down this page) will show 2 pilot, 10 driving, 4 trailing ... making it a 2-10-4.
The type name is often determined by the first US railroad to use the type ... the Texas and Pacific.
(Four years later, the Canadian Pacific had 2-10-4 'Selkirks' - but that's for another day.)
* * *
That transverse tank seen at the top of the locomotive contains a bundle of pipes holding cold water which was piped forward from the tender.
When the locomotive is running, some 'used steam' from the cylinders is diverted into that feedwater heater tank where it surrounds those pipes and heats up the water they contain. The warmed-up water goes back toward the cab, where the fireman injects it into the boiler.
... So the feedwater heater scavenges some heat from the 'used steam' before it is lost into the sky ... and heats up water before it is directly exposed to the heat from the firebox inside the boiler.
Short explanation: The feedwater heater improves the thermal efficiency of the steam engine.
* * *
In winter, my beloved Canadian National Railways steam engines often had tenders full of water which was literally ice cold so it was reasonable to pre-heat the water.
But why would the the Texas and Pacific Railway use feedwater heaters?
... To make some random kid in Montreal happy?
No, they could not have known about my pre-literate interests. They used feedwater heaters to maximize the efficiency of their locomotives. In the last 30 years of North American steam locomotive design, the locomotive builders were constantly bumping up against the power output limits of this type of external combustion engine.
Railroads were moving longer and heavier trains and they required more powerful locomotives, but steam engines were requiring increasingly expensive and painfully baroque designs to accomplish this.
The T&P Texas-type engine was a fine example of the largest and most powerful locomotive one could build in a traditional, aesthetically-pleasing and complete form.
Its design originated from Lima Locomotive Works and mechanical engineer William E Woodard. He used all the available methods of increasing efficiency to create the 'Super Power' locomotive concept. But once you succeed at creating 'Super' ... can anything ever surpass it?
* * *
It is possible that rail enthusiasts who visit this blog may be joined (today) by people who have invested less of their lives in the study of railroads. So, some images will involve a bit more 'interpretation' than normal.
* * *
Here's a nice capsule summary of the Texas and Pacific's history:
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| from: The Historical Guide to North American Railroads; George H Drury; 1985; Kalmbach. |
* * *
From 1868:
Here is the earliest source I could find which referred to railroads in Texas.
This post is put together over the usual course of just a few days. It would be impossible for me to interpret the following railroad references as well as a local historian could. That is, someone who knows the corporate histories, the local equipment, and the historical development of the region.
So ... I am posting what I have found and I hope any readers in Texas will find these references interesting. Perhaps some people will want to download some items and keep them in their files, share them on-line with others, etc.
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| from: Travelers Official Rail Way Guide of the United States & Canada; June 1868; Reprint. |
* * *
From 1887:
This is a standard reference book which was published monthly to include all of the current schedules for 'all' of the railroads in North America. People planning trips for themselves or others would use this reference to set up an itinerary. One copy (from 1941) of this monthly publication is 2.5 inches thick!
A general hazard of early train travel was that every major settlement used 'solar noon' to set its clocks. Trains were the first method of travel which took you far enough in a single day, that these solar-noon-based systems collided with each other.
As a matter of civic pride, railroads used the time at their head offices as the standard for their far-flung railroad systems.
Before the railroads promoted a national switch to 'standard time zones' ... at Chicago you would have several different railroads arriving at several different passenger terminals. In that city, each railroad would be using a different head office city's time for their published schedules. Chicago station clocks would naturally use their own solar time.
Regular readers know this is one of my favourite topics and you can use the search box at the top to look up other, much longer, efforts at exploring this railway-created phenomenon which resulted in a recognized system of standard time zones.
If you examine the cover below, you will notice that a few of locations are still using local solar time.
... You might not miss a train ... but you might schedule a business meeting by telegraph, and make a bad impression because your train's distant head office solar time made you late for the 'local solar time' meeting!
Looking at the map below, the dark wave-form railroad line from New Orleans to El Paso (via Abilene) will be the focus of the other bits of history presented here. The lines around Gainesville and Texarkana will be neglected in my scribblings.
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| from: Travelers' Official Guide; December 1887; National Railway Publication Co. |
If you read the summary of Texas & Pacific history above, you'll notice that Jay Gould is currently its president, below. And that the railroad is in its period of receivership: 1885-1888.
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| from: Travelers' Official Guide; December 1887; National Railway Publication Co. |
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| from: Travelers' Official Guide; December 1887; National Railway Publication Co. |
If you find Abilene on the sheet above under the Rio Grande Division ... and check the footnotes (11) you'll see there is a connection with the stage (coach) for Fort Concho.
* * *
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| from: A Locomotive Engineer's Album; George B Abdill; 1965; Bonanza Books. |
For the train photos, I'll give you as much detail as the book author provides. Unfortunately, photo locations and dates are not always provided.
This was the only photo I could find in my references of a Texas & Pacific engine of this era.
This is probably a builder's photo ... of a fine, powerful engine for its time. An engine rich in early technology systems.
The author points out that the engineer uses an elegant mechanism running through the running board handrail to actuate the cylinder petcocks. Notice the kerosene headlight.
I would add that there is no sign of airbrakes - so trains would have been controlled by brakemen running along the boxcar roofwalks to apply handbrakes on each car. This was a very dangerous activity at night and in foul weather.
Another hazard: This locomotive also uses the old link and pin coupling system. When a locomotive was pushing cars backward to couple them to a train, this system required a brakeman to disappear from the view of the cab ... behind the moving cars ... as he coupled the cars to the train.
... As the cars came together, the brakeman would stand in front of the stationary boxcar. A large 0-shaped metal link had been set in its metal coupler pocket and was held in place with a large metal pin. He held the loose end of this link in his hand, he held a second coupling pin in his other hand ... and waited.
... As the moving cars approached, the brakeman would quickly position the stationary coupling link into a metal pocket on the approaching car and immediately insert the second pin. The brakeman could be crushed between the cars, or lose fingers, if he was not skilled enough with the link and pin. Imagine doing this at night, in rain or snow, with only a kerosene lantern for light.
... Even if the brakeman was swift in dropping the pin correctly ... if the approaching engine and its cars were going too fast, he could be knocked down and run over through the excessive momentum of the approaching cars and their locomotive.
Railroad technology was always evolving and today's Janney-style 'automatic' couplers and automatic train air brakes provided tremendous improvements in safety for operating train crews ... and the general public.
* * *
From 1916:
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| from: Official Guide of the Railways; 1916; National Railway Publication Co. |
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| from: Official Guide of the Railways; 1916; National Railway Publication Co. |
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| from: Official Guide of the Railways; 1916; National Railway Publication Co. |
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| from: Official Guide of the Railways; 1916; National Railway Publication Co. |
Above:
In this 1916 timetable, we can see that the Texas & Pacific has become a well-established railroad.
'Through' passenger trains run over an integrated national railroad system, allowing passengers to continue their travel to distant major cities.
'Condensed' schedules give passengers a quick reference for planning their trips between major centres.
The Guide also lists the equipment used on prestigious 'named' passenger trains - for example, sleeping cars.
Below:
The railroad has a well-established bureaucracy to develop and maintain company standards. Business offices and agents of the railroad can be found far beyond the area served by its rails.
The index of Texas & Pacific stations on the previous two pages indicate that Abilene can be found on Table 1 below, which overflows on the following page to take us through to El Paso.
In the index, Abilene is footnoted as a 'coupon station':
My guess is that when multi-part tickets (special pre-printed perforated cardstock forms routinely issued between popular destinations) were used ... their issuance and handling was performed at larger designated centres.
So perhaps ... at 'coupon station' Abilene you could buy ONE preprinted multi-part ticket to take you all the way to Los Angeles in a sleeping car. On the train, the T&P conductor might punch or detach their coupon before your train carried you through onto the next railway. You would retain the main part of the ticket with any remaining attached coupons.
... You would not have to carry extra money, hope that the next railroad's train had available space in its sleeping car, and purchase a ticket for the next segment of your journey when you reached the west end of the T&P at El Paso.
... If you were just travelling by coach to Los Angeles, you might be able to detrain at El Paso (a coupon station), see the sights, and use your next coupon to board a coach on a later train and continue your journey west.
... Often, the through fare was cheaper than the sum of its parts: i.e. If the trip segments were purchased individually as you travelled, your trip was more expensive.
There was a commercial benefit in running a well-organized travel system:
Before long-distance road transportation was well established, travelling salesmen (for example) would be travelling all over the railway system to visit customers. The wares they sold would be sent out on passenger trains as express, or in boxcars if the items were larger bulky freight.
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| from: Official Guide of the Railways; 1916; National Railway Publication Co. |
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| from: Official Guide of the Railways; 1916; National Railway Publication Co. |
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| from: Official Guide of the Railways; 1916; National Railway Publication Co. |
* * *
Below, are the 1916 listings for
The Abilene and Southern Railway
and
The Wichita Valley Railway.
* * *
In Abilene, in 1916 ...
The Texas & Pacific, and Abilene & Southern depots were 711 yards apart.
The Texas & Pacific, and Wichita Valley depots were 'adjacent'.
This information was included for the benefit of passengers making connections between railroads.
(This depot information comes from a separate note which I have not reproduced here.)
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| from: Official Guide of the Railways; 1916; National Railway Publication Co. |
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| from: Official Guide of the Railways; 1916; National Railway Publication Co. |
Still circa 1916 ...
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| from: The Book of Texas; Harry Benedict; 1916; Doubleday Page & Co. archive.org |
This is such an interesting photo!
The angle of the sun and the fact that we see condensing steam more than smoke suggests that the photo might have been taken in the cool morning hours.
Looking at the photo from left to right:
- At the left, the large, low, peaked roof is probably a railroad freight shed where strings of boxcars would have been spotted. The shed would have been designed so that the door of each standard-size boxcar in a coupled string of cars would line up with a corresponding door on the shed.
- There was probably a loading dock for wagons pulled by draft horses, or trucks, under the very low roof closest to the camera.
- Of course, local products being shipped would travel from the dock, through the shed, to the cars in the opposite direction through the freight shed.
- There are probably 8 or 9 locomotives working in this crowded yard.
- A new worker in this environment had to learn a great many things fast to avoid injury or death.
- You can see the brakewheels sprouting up near the boxcar roofwalks.
- At this point in history, automatic air brakes would have been used for train control. The handbrakes would have been used mainly as 'parking brakes' - when cars were spotted on inclined tracks.
- Handbrakes were also used to control the speed of cars when performing highly skilled 'flying switches' or when cars were 'kicked' ... during which a brakeman rode the top of a boxcar released by the engine and rolling under its own momentum. The brakeman controlled/stopped the car using the handbrake.
You can see brakemen standing high on two cars. With curving tracks, this was the best place to be to monitor the end of a reversing string of cars AND for a brakeman's hand signals to be seen from the locomotive cab. Imagine working in this place at night with kerosene lanterns.
The track at the extreme right seems to lead to a facility with structures to service locomotives.
In the foreground, the car with the four roof hatches is a refrigerator car.
Ice would be loaded into the four hatches through a mechanized overhead system of chutes.
There were many ways to adjust the rate of cooling, depending on the shipment.
- To avoid heat spoilage for apples or potatoes, large pieces of ice would be loaded.
- If dressed meat was loaded in the car on meat hooks, smaller pieces of ice mixed with rock salt might be used for more intense cooling.
- The hatches could also be propped open so the air flowing through the car acted as another variable in this highly-skilled 'latent heat of fusion science project'.
- The cooling regime chosen by the shipper would determine where a given car was pre-scheduled for re-icing at facilities along the route to its destination.
- To prevent spoilage and to otherwise compensate for unforeseen problems such as heat waves melting the ice too fast en route, experienced carmen inspected the ice bunkers and thermometers of refrigerator cars at major terminals. They ensured the re-icing work was done at the icing facility and they kept a log of their inspections.
In a cold climate where freezing was to be avoided ... instead of ice, coke-burning heaters were lowered into the hatches with the hatches open sufficiently to admit oxygen to maintain combustion.
* * *
Once again, here is an example of the exquisite 'Super Power' Texas-type locomotive.
You'll notice that the engine is oil-fired. The sand box at the back of the cab is separate from the sand for traction kept in the sand dome. The sand dome is in the centre of the boiler and has a small '600' on its side. From it, you can see four pipes which would carry sand to spread under the large driving wheels, when needed for traction.
Regarding the sand at the back of the cab: At a point in a trip when the locomotive was working hard, the fireman would hold a scoop of sand at a small opening in the firebox door. The immensely powerful suction at the firebox would suck the sand right through the flue pipes. This would sand off the unwanted insulating soot which had formed on the interior of the flue pipes.
The flue pipe system was an essential heat-exchanger which ran through the full length of the boiler. The heat of the firebox exhaust gases, travelled through the long honeycomb of metal flue pipes, to turn the water in the boiler to steam.
Below, I think the line diagram notation, translated, reads: 82 x 2.25 inch tubes (probably a steam 'superheater'?); and 184 x 3.5 inch flues.
Needless to say, when you sanded out so many sooty pipes so forcefully, it produced a spectacular display of black smoke.
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| from: American Locomotives; Edwin P Alexander; 1950; Bonanza Books. |
Above: Engine 909 is leading a passenger train westbound from Dallas circa 1950.
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| from: Straight Through Texas, article; David P Morgan; Trains March 1950; Kalmbach. |
Above, at an unrecorded location, a Texas type pulls a number of oil tank cars.
Before long-distance pipelines were constructed, railroads transported much of the crude oil.
The track workers will inspect the train as it passes, looking for overheated bearings ('hotboxes') and dragging equipment.
If they spot a problem, they will signal to the crew in the caboose, where the conductor will apply the air brakes.
A simple wave meant everything was OK.
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| from: Straight Through Texas, article; David P Morgan; Trains March 1950; Kalmbach. |
The 'Espee' they are referring to is the
Southern
Pacific.
At this point in history, the Electro-Motive Division (EMD) of General Motors was the American locomotive builder with the most experience in building diesel-electric locomotives. EMD had pioneered the design of mainline diesel-electric locomotives before 1941. To conserve essential resources, the US War Production Board limited the production of competitors' prototypes during the War. By the time World War 2 ended, EMD had delivered about 1000 mainline locomotive units, giving them a significant commercial advantage.
On 'diesels', electricity turns the wheels, and a diesel engine spins the generator to produce the electricity. This arrangement eliminated the headache of designing a mechanical transmission to transmit force from the diesel motor directly to the wheels.
Steam locomotives provided 'instant' steam power to the wheels, but their large driving wheels made them prone to slipping when starting a heavy train. If you needed more power to start or pull a train, you needed to provide another steam engine with its own engineer and fireman. These external combustion engines characteristically provided their maximum power at higher speeds.
Connected together electrically and pneumatically, multiple diesel 'units' could be strung together and operated by only one engineer. Diesels provided a higher tractive effort at slow speeds to make them much better for starting and pulling heavy freight trains. Diesels geared for passenger service could pull trains as fast as the track would permit - often this would be in the neighbourhood of 90 MPH.
A common story is that an experienced steam engineer could be taught how how 'drive' a diesel (not trouble-shoot it) in a couple of trips. It was likened to driving a bus by some, and a few engineers were critical of how clean and simple the work was. Steam locomotives were seen by many as having expressive personalities and many felt that something was lost when diesels took over.
The railroad bosses loved diesels because of how much they could pull using just one engineer ... and how much less labour intensive it was to maintain them. The bosses could get rid of their steam roundhouses every 125 miles or so, along with their roundhouse staff. Water tanks, coaling towers, ashpits - all could go, along with the people to staff and maintain them.
Above all, the slide-rule wielding railroad accountants were convinced by this:
Steam locomotive thermal efficiency: 3-6%
Diesel-electric locomotive thermal efficiency: 30-40%
In 1950, railroads were at a turning point.
* * *
Here is the locomotive roster of the Texas & Pacific in 1950.
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| from: Straight Through Texas, article; David P Morgan; Trains March 1950; Kalmbach. |
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| from: Highball, A Pageant of Trains; Lucius Beebe; 1945; Bonanza Books. |
Here's a fast passenger train which has rolled through Abilene.
There is perishable traffic, express and mail carried at its headend.
As the caption points out, there are sleeping cars on it which come direct from California.
* * *
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| from: Highball, A Pageant of Trains; Lucius Beebe; 1945; Bonanza Books. |
The engineer has the throttle pulled back as far as it will go, the fireman is running the oil atomizers at capacity as well.
Probably two 'injectors' are working hard to force warmed water from the feedwater heater into the boiler - overcoming the boiler's 200+ PSI of pressure through the practical application of Bernoulli's Principle.
A display like this was always popular with rail enthusiast photographers. Typically, railway management liked to see a 'clean stack' (very little smoke) which meant that every last hydrocarbon molecule was firmly connected with oxygen ... in other words, the oil was giving up all of its heat to boil water.
However, sometimes it was necessary for an experienced engineer to "Hog 'er out!" as we see here.
* * *
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| from: Steam Locomotives; 1953; Trains & Travel; Kalmbach. |
A great photo.
* * *
An Employee Timetable from 1974
The durable faux-leather plastic cover of this timetable does not scan particularly well.
By this point in history, the Texas & Pacific has been absorbed by its Missouri Pacific parent. Abilene still has multiple railroad connections as you can see on the timetable map below. Some of the place names are hard to read, but that is how they appear in the timetable.
This timetable has a few nice user-friendly features that Canadian timetables of the same period do not. The footnotes/reference marks are reproduced from the inside back cover, above.
A 'wye' is a triangular track arrangement with a switch at each corner and track 'tails' extending beyond each switch. While a turntable can turn an engine, a wye can turn a whole train in three moves. From a functional standpoint, a 'wye' is shaped like a 'Y'.
* * *
We'll follow the old Texas & Pacific line from New Orleans to El Paso, for old times sake.
If you're running a freight train from New Orleans, your first siding is at Ama on the right side at Mile 19.3 (MP = Mile Post). If your train is 100 cars long, you'll have lots of room to clear the mainline there because the siding is over 2 miles long - 11060 feet.
According to the Rulebook 'Ama' is a 'station' because it is a place named in the timetable. There is no railroad passenger building there, no city hall.
Every location along a railroad is expressed as a mileage on a given railroad subdivision. Because crews work on just a few subdivisions, they know their territories extremely well. Without seeing a mileboard/milepost, they can usually express their location by its mileage.
If I understand their timetable system correctly: ABS (automatic block system) is coded green and CTC (centralized traffic control) is coded red.
Given their mass and momentum, and the fact that steel wheels on steel rails are almost frictionless, trains need a long time to stop. Train 'traffic lights' provide their version of a 'yellow traffic light' miles before the train is expected to stop at a red signal. Excellent lines of sight are often provided so engineers can see the approaching signals from miles away.
Here is a simplified overview of ABS and CTC:
ABS divides a railroad into 'blocks' of track which are several miles long. Each block has its own electric track circuit. These track circuits respond to the presence of a train and change signals to maintain train separation automatically. Generally, two trains approaching each other on the same track will both receive a caution signal when they are still many miles apart. Continuing toward each other and getting ready to stop, when they later reach their respective red signals they will usually still be miles apart.
CTC has the same safety features as ABS. In addition, a Dispatcher (today, they are often called a Rail Traffic Controller and they may work hundreds of miles away from the track they control) exerts control at 'control points' - also known as 'home signals'. A Dispatcher can authorize train movement by clearing a series of control points in front of a train - the signals go from red to green. The Dispatcher will also remotely set electric switches for the route they want the train to follow. Between the control points, the track circuits change the 'intermediate signals' to maintain train separation in the same way as ABS does.
* * *
Below, at Alexandria, we say good-bye to the Alexandria Subdivision and start our trip down the Shreveport 'Sub'. ('Sub' is authentic railroad talk.)
From Marshall - Mile 351.4 on the Shreveport Sub (above)
we suddenly find ourselves at
Marshall - Mile 66.3 on the Red River & Dallas-Ft Worth Terminal Divisions (below).
By now, I'll bet you've got this whole system worked out.
Below, you'll notice that at Mile 406.6 we find Abilene!
At Abilene, looking at the symbols to the right of the name ...
These are the operational features indicated in the timetable in 1974 ...
(See: Explanation of Characters on the orange background (above) - we passed by it a while ago.)
- A general order book and a standard clock. (In the book, you'll find management operational messages. Railroaders must use railroad grade watches set to the correct time while on duty.)
- Yard limits. (Protects switching movements. Simplified: Be prepared to stop in 1/2 range of vision.)
- Track scale. (For weighing cars to help determine the billable cost of a shipment.)
- Radio base station. (A powerful radio tower which train radios can contact. e.g. To speak to the Dispatcher.)
- Train order office. (Where paper movement orders dictated by the Dispatcher are put into writing for individual train crews.)
Below, a little bit of history - the Abilene & Southern Railway is now just a Subdivision.
I have reversed the black/white to emphasize that this is not part of the mainline we have been travelling.
The End.
* * *
Local History Bonus!
I was looking for old maps to illustrate the trip from New Orleans to El Paso, and local details of Abilene. I found this interesting topographic map from 1944 which shows the railroads at one of my favourite map sites. Early aviators sometimes referred to railroads as 'the iron compass' - they were valuable landmarks which could help guide the flyer along their route.
It is not possible to download these images, so I had to give you screen prints. The legend (below) is a cobbled-together mess and I apologize, but I wanted to provide clearly legible translations of all the symbols used on the map.
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| from: Dallas (Q5); 1944; US Coast & Geodetic Survey. David Rumsey Map Collection. davidrumsey.com |
If I am reading the map correctly, Abilene had a "mooring mast" - That cigar attached to a stick.
(more data/speculation below)
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| from: Dallas (Q5); 1944; US Coast & Geodetic Survey. David Rumsey Map Collection. davidrumsey.com |
I have looked, but I have found no photos of any mooring mast at Abilene. It might have been of a very temporary wartime design - for use only in an emergency.
Whether it was railroads, or oil and petroleum products ... during the Second World War, the war effort required some improvisation ...
While long-range aircraft would have been ideal for patrolling the seas to protect coastal oil tankers from German U-Boats, it was interesting to discover that airships were also used. Probably, their strengths included their ability to stay out on patrol much longer than an aircraft - which needed fuel to stay aloft. And perhaps, the priorities for large aircraft limited what could be produced for use outside of the major theatres of war.
US warships were transferred between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Panama Canal during the War ...
So ... I have wondered if a trans-continental system was put in place in case there was an urgent need to increase anti-submarine patrols on the Pacific coast of the United States. Perhaps, might this mooring mast in Abilene have been on the shortest route a blimp could take to reach the Pacific Ocean? This is only my wild speculation.
From Wikipedia:
They built 134 K-Class airships ('blimps') before and during World War 2.
There were blimp bases at the Naval Air Stations at Hitchcock, Texas and Houma, Louisiana.
They carried weapons and were used for patrol and anti-submarine warfare.
I haven't had a good look at this document yet,
but archive.org actually has a manual for one of these airships, link below ...
