My wife and I will be relocating to Texas soon and I'm considering building a freelance waterfront railroad layout, set in the late 1930s. Since we will be living in Texas, I'd like that to be the locale. Any suggestions on books or websites about Texas ports...I'm somewhat familiar with Houston and Galveston, and am wondering about smaller ports.
Port of Beaumont- Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, Missouri Pacific, Kansas City Southern. Big vertical lift bridge with an diamond crossing just a few feet off the end of the bridge. I used Beaumont as the basis for my unmodeled terminal of "Lost River" on my East Texas Santa Fe line. featured in Kalmbach's Top Notch Track Plans
The layout I am just starting, based (loosely) on Galveston in the 1950s...
http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=88991&highlight=island+seaport
Freeport...
In 1905, the Velasco, Brazos and Northern was crossed by the Saint Louis, Brownsville and Mexico, one of three lines built into Houston by B. F. Yoakum. The Trinity and Brazos Valley approached Houston from Dallas, the Beaumont, Sour Lake and Western from Beaumont, and the Brownsville and Mexico was to connect Houston to the southern tip of Texas. Yoakum didn't want to buy expensive city real estate for three routes into Houston. The three Yoakum railroads and the Santa Fe joined as four-way partners in the Houston Belt and Terminal Railroad. The Trinity & Brazos Valley and the Beaumont, Sour Lake and Western joined at the northern edge of Houston to share one route to downtown. The Brownsville and Mexico used Santa Fe tracks to leave Houston to the southeast to Alvin and Algoa before turning southwest on its own tracks. The line, nicknamed the "Brownie" crossed the Velasco line at Angleton. The StLB&M was originally affiliated with the Saint Louis and San Francisco system. (I once had a Frisco public timetable for this period, but I was talked out of it by a friend who wanted it for a museum in Oklahoma.)
The Velasco, Brazos and Northern Railway Company was sold at foreclosure in 1906, becoming the Houston and Brazos Valley Railway the following year. I have a 1907 map which shows the I&GN line between Columbia and Houston, the line between Anchor and Velasco still labeled as V.B.& N., and the StLB&M running northeast by southwest through Angleton.
( Texas and Oklahoma, Chicago Geographical Publishing Co., 1907)
In 1913, control of the Houston and Brazos Valley came under by the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway Company (Katy) and the Freeport Texas Company in 1913 with each company owning 50 percent. The southern terminal, Velasco, had a fish and oyster plant and shipped cattle, cotton, cane sugar, and syrup. But a new industry was making its impact. The railroad built five miles of track to reach the sulfur mine of the Freeport Sulphur Company at Bryan Mount just southwest of Freeport, as New Velasco came to be known. The railroad also built a bridge across the Brazos River, and other trackage around Freeport.
A history of sulphur operations near Freeport mentions a flood in 1918 washing out "eight miles of the branch railway to Freeport," apparently referring to the Freeport Sulphur operation rather than the town. A spur was spliced into the Houston and Brazos Valley some 6 miles north of Freeport in 1922 to supply a sulphur mining operation on land controlled by the Hoskins Brothers. The line, which became the Hoskins Subdivision, ran 13 miles to a point known as Hoskins Mound or Hoskins Dome. Sulphur production began in earnest the following year, and the Freeport area became one of the leading sulphur producers in the world.
(William Haynes. Brimstone: The Stone That Burns/ The Story of the Frasch Sulphur Industry. Princeton, NJ :D. Van Nostrand Co., 1959. 112)
Following the reorganization of the Katy in 1923, its interest in the Houston and Brazos Valley was acquired by the Southern Pacific Company. The following year, the line was sold to the New Orleans, Texas and Mexico Railroad Company. Included in the sale were the Freeport Terminal and the branch to Hoskins Mount, which were made a part of the Houston and Brazos Valley.
In that same year,1924, Missouri Pacific acquired nearly ALL of the railroads in Brazoria County:
New Orleans, Texas and Mexico (including former Houston and Brazos Valley)
International and Great Northern (Tap line to Columbia)
Saint Louis Brownsville and Mexico
Sugarland Railroad
The roads came under the umbrella name of MP Gulf Coast Lines, but were operated as separate
railroads.
The Post Office changed another name on the railroad map. It renamed Columbia to "East Columbia" in 1927, to distinguish it from the larger West Columbia several miles west. In the 30-plus years since the 1890s, the population dropped from 1500 to under 200.
The Velasco/ Freeport/ Quintana area developed into a major industrial area during the 1940s. Diversion of the Brazos River and the formation of a tidal estuary deep enough to accommodate large vessels in the old river channel revived both Velasco and nearby Freeport.
Growth was spurred by construction of the Dow Chemical Company facilities, and the town's participation in the Brazosport industrial area. Eventually, Velasco would be incorporated into Freeport.
In 1951, the railroad line from Anchor (the junction for the original Columbia terminal) to Freeport was considered the Freeport Subdivision of the Kingsville Division of Saint Louis Brownsville and Mexico, one of Missouri Pacific's Gulf Coast Lines. The Freeport Sub's only passenger traffic was a daily-except-Sunday train which ran at 7AM from Freeport to Hoskins, 19 miles, and returned 4:40PM Hoskins to Freeport. Presumably the train primarily carried workers for the sulphur operation. The schedule also showed a local freight that ran in the morning from Freeport to Angleton to Anchor, made a 20 minute turnaround and returned to Freeport. Trackage between Houston, Anchor and East Columbia, operated by the same railroad, Missouri Pacific, was part of a different division, and controlled by a different timetable-- of which I do not have a copy. Although the line from Houston to Angleton to Freeport seemed to be a continuous physical route, owned by the same railroad, the accident of history placed the two portions of the route in different divisions, to be operated by different crews.
(Gulf Coast Lines, Kingsville Division, Timetable No.48I (I poossess a partial photocopy of an Employee timetable), Sunday, July 22, 1951.)
a couple of layout articles from old Model Railroader magazines
Mississippi Alabama & Gulf plan of New Orleans layout (So much like my stuff I think of it as an "honorary" eastex layout) HO Cliff Powers 14 x 32 Great Model Railroads 2007 p.84
Galveston Wharves RR you can model, _Mod RRer_ May83 p.58
I have so so much. Need to check bibliographic references. Back later...
I have so much material on Texas railroads and seaports, I need to organize a list. I will try to work northeast to southwest along the coast. Not all of these are actually "seaports", ports for seagoing ship traffic. Some are little fishing harbors where there is one spur for loading seafood. But here goes...
Port of Sabine Pass (don't think ever any railroads..)
Orange- SP, MP, Sabine River & Northern
Beaumont- ATSF, KCS, MP, SP
Galveston
Texas City- Texas City Terminal, ATSF, MP/MKT (GH&H), SP
Baytown- SP/ Houston North Shore (MP)
LaPorte (part of Port of Houston but separate geographically & RR-wise) SP
Houston -"where 23 railroads meet the sea" (slogan)
Freeport- MP
Matagorda- Cane Belt RR (ATSF)
Palacios- SP
Point Comfort- Point Comfort & Northern (Alcoa)
Green Lake/ Seadrift/ Port O'Connor
Rockport
Aransas Pass/ Harbor Island/ Aransas Terminal
Corpus Christi- SP, MP, Texas Mexican
Riviera Beach- "McKeen Car" passenger line
Brownsville- MP, SP
to be filled in later.........This could easily take a week and a dozen or more posts. Let me know if I wear you out.
I'm not that up on prototype books on Texas harbor railroads, however, look for the May 1983 issue of Model Railroader magazine. On pages 58-63 there is a great Railroad You Can Model article on the Galveston Wharves Railroad, authored by Cyril Durrenberger and Tom Eisenhour.
It comes with a neat trackplan that you can build in stages, and has information on the prototype from the steam era to present (well, 1983 at least). I don't model Texas railroading but the plan could easily be used for other waterfront prototypes, like the City of Milwaukee harbor trackage, for example.
leighant wrote:IOrange- SP, MP, Sabine River & Northern
The MP was really the Orange and Northwestern Railroad.
The MP was locally called the "Gulf Coast Lines" and was made up of many short lines patched together into one railroad. Portions of the lines over around DeQuincy, LA were originally Frisco. The last vestiges were the branches, the O&NW, the New Iberia and Northern, New Orleans and Lower Coast, etc.
Actually of all the lines that touch the gulf, the only one that was true "MP" was the line to Lake Charles, LA. All the others were subsidiary lines (IGN, STLB&M, GCL, BSL&W, SAUG, HNS) or the TP.
The GC&SF built by the city of Houston to what was then the bigger city of Galveston. They later entered Houston on essentially a branch off the line to Galveston.
When the HNS was operating Baytown was known as "Goose Creek". The HNS was an interurban line that used trolleys and freight motors. When the MP acquired it they used Steam and diesel. Its the only part of the MP that operated under electric, steam and diesel.
The line to Freeport was actually an IGN line that was separate from the STLB&M line that paralleled the coast. Extra board crews at Freeport came from Palestine, TX while the STLB&M crews were "Kingsville" crews.
The PCN ran a unit train of alumina from Point Comfort to the ALCOA plant on the RSS, Rockdale Sandow and Southern over the MP. The train used 3 PCN/RSS MP15's as power. Its symbol was the MVP/MPV.
The MP line to Corpus was actually the "SAUG" (sausage) San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf RR, headquartered out of Pleasanton, TX.
Brownsville was the location of one of the only ship/train collisions on the MP. A retired passenger liner was moored along a pier at the Port of Brownsville and a track came up to the edge of the pier. A switcher shoved a cut a little too far and put the knuckle of a gondola through the side of the ship.
Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
dehusman wrote: The GC&SF built by the city of Houston to what was then the bigger city of Galveston. They later entered Houston on essentially a branch off the line to Galveston.
The Santa Fe line from Galveston was the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe, but it was built by Galveston interests to fight Houston. Houston clamped a freight embargo on the previously existing lines to Galveston whenever there was a rumor of yellow fever on the island. They discovered that this brought more business to Houston which couldn't go through Galveston. The Galveston interests built a line to BYPASS Houston to the south, and the branch into Houston was built as a bit of an afterthought.
Notice the names of stations on the GC&SF named for Galveston businessmen- Rosenberg and Moody...
Beaumont- ATSF, KCS, MP(Gulf Coast Lines/ NOT&M), SP (T&NO); through long-distance passenger service SP, MP, KCS
"doodlebug" motor car ATSF.
Beaumont rail passenger depots listed
Southern Pacific 895 Laurel Ave.
Kansas City Southern-Missouri Pacific K C & Jefferson
Gulf Colorado & Santa Fe 603 Crockett
from _Beaumont Guide_ (Federal Writers Project, 1939)
MP/KCS depot blt 1916, discussed and shown in
_Southwestern Historical Quarterly_ #79 Apr76 p.423
KCS vertical lift bridge, Port of Beaumont, leighant color pix, 1995 East Texas trip
SP bascule bridge _Mod RRer_ Oct88filed w/ p.106
SP station, _North American Steam_ (Crescent,1991) p.91
Tankcar string during WWII, _Decade of the Trains 1940s_ p.86
same scene, _Texas: from a Republic to an Empire_
(RepubNatlBank,1945) p.29
same scene _History of the Southern Pacific_,
Yenne, Bonanza 1985 p.49
KCS units & Chaison Yard 1999 _Trains_ Oct99 p.40
MP "Orleanean" eastbound at Beaumont, March 1956, with Santa Fe
sleeper handled west of Houston on ATSF "California Special"
p.49 _Route of the Eagles: MoPac in the Streamline Era_,
As a Santa Fe modeler, I have collected references especially on Santa Fe...
M-150 near Crockett St depot in 1939,
___Doodlebugs_ book p.70 (copy in EASTEX file)
TX M-151 shortly after leaving station ca 1937 with Coach 700
_Doodlebugs_ (McCall) p.69 (copy in EASTEX file)
passenger train platform pix, Crockett St. depot
Santa Fe 1940-1971 in color vol.4 p.66,67
Crockett St depot vacant, leighant personal unpublished color pix,
filed w/ 1990 Galv-Beaumont trip
Crockett St depot reused as lawyers office, leighant personal unpublished color pix,
filed w/, 1995 East Texas trip
Calder Avenue Depot, located at yard 1 mile from main Beaumont
psgr depot. listed as terminal of Beaumont-Galveston mixed
trains in 1916-1917, and in 1935-1941 timetables;
mixed trains gone by 1942
_Santa Fe Modeler_ NovDec80 p.6; JanFeb83 p.3
scrap line w combine #2649 used on mixed trains,
color _Coach, Cabbage & Caboose_ p.94
leighant wrote: A history of sulphur operations near Freeport mentions a flood in 1918 washing out "eight miles of the branch railway to Freeport," apparently referring to the Freeport Sulphur operation rather than the town. A spur was spliced into the Houston and Brazos Valley some 6 miles north of Freeport in 1922 to supply a sulphur mining operation on land controlled by the Hoskins Brothers. The line, which became the Hoskins Subdivision, ran 13 miles to a point known as Hoskins Mound or Hoskins Dome. Sulphur production began in earnest the following year, and the Freeport area became one of the leading sulphur producers in the world.
A Freeport friend reports, "Interesting, the tracks out to Hoskins Mound are still there, the rails have just about rusted away. "
dd
My thanks to you all who replied to my original post. This is very helpful information and very much appreciated!! Thank you again for taking the time to help!
Websites, books, and obscure reference works re Galveston railroads and the port...
online history of the Port of Galveston http://www.portofgalveston.com/about/history.shtml
www.galvestonhistory.org
Russell Crump's "Eastern Archives" site, GC&SF Galveston Junction Map, http://www.atsfry.com/EasternArchive/Junction/images/galvesto.jpg
index to 49 Galveston photos, mostly taken in 1921.http://www.atsfry.com/EasternArchive/Photo/galvesto.htm
http://www.galvestonrrmuseum.com/
Galveston Architectural Guidebook, Ellen Beasley and Stephen Fox, Houston: Rice University Press/ Galveston Historical Foundation, 1996. includes photos and history of individual industrial and portside buildings.
My two most valuable and most repeatedly consulted sources are primary source documents---
Port Galveston, Annual Report issue, August 1976. Galveston Wharves Port Authority. Includes a 3-foot-wide map showing every track, spur and wharf in the city.
Southern Pacific Transportation Co. Freight Tariff 1517-F June 11, 193. List of private industries located at all points on both Southern Pacific and at least one other railroad, showing name of industry, commodity handled, and railroad serving the industry.
Car Location Identity Codes, ("CLIC book"), Third Subdivision (Sealy-Galveston) date unknown but probably ca. 1983
Galveston Texas City Directory 1971 Dallas: R. L. Polk & Co.
Galveston Texas City Directory 1992 Dallas: R. L. Polk & Co.
Industrial Map of Texas Gulf Coast, Second National Bank of Houston, 1950. Shows location of 400 most important manufacturers in Texas coastal counties in relation to railroads, pipelines,etc.
Insurance Maps of Galveston, Texas. New York: Sanborn Map Co.,1931- Jun, 1950.
Moody's Industrial Manual 1955. New York: Moody's Investors Service.
The Ports of Galveston and Texas City, Texas, prepared by Navigation Data Center ; U.S. Army, Corps of Engineers, Water Resources Support Center, Fort Belvoir, Va. For sale by Navigation Data Center ; Washington, D.C.: Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., distributor], 1996 Federal Document D 103.8:23/996
A Quarter Century of Santa Fe Consists , Fred W. Frailey. 1974, RPC Publications, Godfrey, Ill. 208p. The makeup, routing, en-route switching and schedules of Santa Fe passenger trains, and everywhere else on the system in the quarter century from the end of World War Two to the beginning of Amtrak.
Ray Miller's Galveston, 1983. A guide to history for tourists
Records of the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad Company, 1897-1968, 221 linear feet: 85 record storage boxes, 323 document boxes at Houston Metropolitan Research Center,Houston Public Library. INDEX ONLY available online at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/houpub/00008/hpub-00008p1.html
Refrigerator Cars: Ice Bunker Cars 1884-1979 (Santa Fe Railway Rolling Stock Reference Series- Vol.2) C. Keith Jordan, Richard H. Hendrickson, John B. Moore and A. Dean Hale. 1994, Santa Fe Modelers Organization Inc., Norman, Ok. 288p. Covers cars of special interest to Galveston traffic: company service ice cars, salt cars for transporting ice used in refrigeration, "superinsulated" reefers and dry ice cars.
Santa Fe in the Lone Star State Vol.1 1949-1969, Steve Allen Goen, 2000, Four Ways West Publishing. p.50
"Santa Fe Refrigerator Department Table of Ice Manufacturers and Cold Storage Plants on the Santa Fe Railway System, 1945", Supplement to Santa Fe Modeler 2nd Quarter 1989
"Santa Fe System History Map." drawn by Russell Lee Crump. Supplement to Vol.10 #4 Santa Fe Modeler April, 1987. (Shows all lines ever operated by Santa Fe system with date that each segment of line was built, acquired, sold, abandoned or still in operation)
Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide; the Encyclopedia of Texas 1952-53, Dallas: Belo Corporation.
Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide; the Encyclopedia of Texas 1958-59, Dallas: Belo Corporation.
some items in magazines, etc.
Roundhouse, Galveston, TX pix & scale drawings Santa Fe Modeler NovDec 77 p.6
model of SF depot by Minton Cronkite for Texas Centenniel, display model rr Mod RRer Jan89 p.97
Duval Sulphur Co. pier Warbonnet 3Q98 p.18
Texas City
An oil port, on Galveston Bay, some 10 miles into the bay from the open Gulf of Mexico. Served by the Texas City Terminal, which during the 1950s to 1980s had connections just outside town to the ATSF, MP/MKT (GH&H), and SP. Lots of refineries and chemical plants. Typical rail scene would be several tracks full of tankcars sandwiched in between refineries. Most tracks would NOT be in sight of the water...
Some web information and pics
History of Texas City including early railroads
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/hdt3.html
History of Texas City Terminal Railroad
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/eqt12.html
official website of the Port of Texas City and Texas City Terminal Railroad
http://www.railporttc.com/
history page on Port of Texas City from Texas City Public Library
http://www.texascity-library.org/HistoryPort.pdf
Texas City photos- 1930s-1970s
http://www.texascityphotos.com/index.html
Texas City explosion, deadliest industrial disaster in American history
http://www.local1259iaff.org/disaster.html
In a book: Texas City Terminal Co. McKeen car, downtown station, and short chapter on streetcar system, photo of Texas City Jct. transfer station out on one of the through trunklines. in Houston Electric p.196 (history of Houston trolleycars, interurbans and related electric traction lines)
Big model railroad club with public display: Galveston County Model RR Club: N scale layout at Texas City Museum: portrays Galveston causeway, drydocks, storm levee, Galveston SF depot. I think they have other scales too but I was mostly looking at the N scale because of my interest in modeling Galveston in N.
Wow, I was Googling® to track down information and I discovered that THIS THREAD on trains.com forum has already been listed on Google!
Baytown history http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/BB/hdb1.html
Dayton-Goose Creek Railway >become Southern Pacific http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/DD/eqd10.html
Baytown is the eastern end of a rail line built as one of the last interurbans in America, the Houston North Shore, subject of an entire book. Houston North Shore become part of the MoPac system and now UP. HNS/MP depot shown in the book Houston North Shore p.21
As a port, Baytown is primary an oil port. Railroads operate to refineries and tank farms, and ships are loaded by pipeline, so railroads do not run immediately shipside.
Some information and photo references about Baytown industries:
Humble Oil, construction of Baytown Refinery 1919 Houston North Shore p.10 cat cracker in 1949 p.43 HOX 315 tankcar Humble oil p.86
Humble Oil & Refining Baytown Refinery asphalt plant, pix 10-car rail loading rack. handles 2000 barrels asphalt/day. also 1000 barrels furnace oil for carbon black manufacturers. loading rate 400 barrels/hour. "Asphalt for Industry",Humble employee magazine
Humble Oil & Refining Baytown Refinery in-plant switching operations,story re new diesel locomotive, pix of new diesel & old steam locos, commodities handled by rail. "Old 997 is New", Humble employee magazine
Oil cans used for Esso, Shell, Gulf manufactured by Crown Cork & Seal Co, with plants in Chicago, St. Louis and east and west coasts. Business Week Nov.19,1955 p.4
Stauffer Chemical has (had?) plants for regenerating spent sulphuric acid in Houston and Baytown, also Baton Rouge and out of area. receives from refineries, furnishes "water-white" sulphuric acid. according to New York Herald Tribune,"Oil's 1st Century" supplement, Sept.13, 1959.
A railroad construction contractor in Baytown http://www.ameritrac.cc/
A locomotive rebuilding company in Baytown: Specialty Locomotive Inc; 115 N Main St; Baytown, TX 77520; (281) 425-9850. I took pix of their plant and locos in various stages of rebuilding some 12 years ago...
Again, my sincere thanks to those of you have contributed information in response to my initial post. It has made me look forward even more to moving to Texas, which we will do once we sell our house here in Idaho. I think it will be fun to try modeling a completely different part of the country, with different industries.
I'm very familiar with seaports, but primarily those in my native Pacific Northwest, such as Seattle. Of course, there the products shipped are based on the region (lumber, grain, etc.). The older piers, most of which are no longer used for shipping, are strictly creosoted timber, and water depth increases rapidly as you move offshore, which makes sense given Seattle's steep hills. Having visited Galveston, I realize the Gulf is much shallower, which no doubt affects harbor layouts. Were the older Gulf port piers also timber?
Time piers, yes. I remember some of the older wharfs with wood piers and piling when I came to Corpus Christi in the middle 1960s. (I was a TV reporter and enjoyed shooting industrial and martime stories on the docks...)
Since you asked, I uploaded some old photos from my personal "archives" to my railimages webspace so I could post them here...
This is from a old sepia tone original photographic print I found in an antique shop. It is supposed to be Aransas Pass which could mean either the TOWN of Aransas Pass, or the original "pass", or Harbor Island, located across from what is now the town of Port Aransas. This is apparently before the main Port of Corpus Christi opened in 1926
I don't know what this shows. I scanned it from a 1 1/2 x 2" contact print I found in a bin in an antique store. I guess it is in Mexico, Central America or the Caribbean. The physical appearance of the original print makes me guess it is from the 1920s or 30s.
The last is an illustration of a wharf at Galveston, Texas in 1899, copied from the original of a Galveston hurricane commemorative book published in 1901.
I just happened to think where I have original unpublished snapshots of the Port of Houston in the 1930s. The USS Constitution, "Old Ironsides" visited Houston about 1932 or 33, and my dad shot some snapshots on his Brownie box camera. I cannot upload the photos right now because they are in a room where my lost-his-apartment in-law is a day sleeper. I will try to see if they show anything useful...
My in-law went to his night burger-flipping job and I was able to get into what is supposed to be MY train room and "archive". Found my mom's photo album from when she and my late father, Henry P. Anthony, were dating. They went to see the visit of the USS Constitution, "Old Ironsides" to the Port of Houston. That was a momentous occasion for Houston, which makes it easy for me to verify the approximate date for the photos-- February 1932.
Blowing up a detail from the right corner of the preceeding photo, an oil loading dock, apparently built using timber piling.
My dad shot some closeups of the USS Constitution, the stern, cannons, etc. Those are too close on the detail of the ship to see any of the incidental details of the port facilities. But he photographed some of the other sights. This snapshot focusing on a "serious" yacht shows, at right, the concrete construction of docks in the upper chanhnel near the turning basin-- also the steel bollard for tieing up. On the left side of the image, across the channel, is a structure for the ship-loading part of an export grain terminal elevator.
These two submarines seem small by modern standards. In the background across the channel, dockside transfer sheds.
Port of Houston history
http://www.museumofhouston.org/home/exhibits_podcast
Port of Houston Authority official site
http://www.portofhouston.com/geninfo/overview1.html
Port of Houston Public Relations guide, online download of booklets, etc.
http://www.portofhouston.com/publicrelations/publications.html
ABOVE SITE INCLUDES LIST OF FREE PUBLICATIONS
All of the above publications are available free and will be delivered by postal (traditional) mail. To obtain publications, send your request in writing to:
Publications/Communications ServicesPort of Houston AuthorityP.O. Box 2562Houston, Texas 77252-2562
Not a "photo-and-train book" but best book I know that explains how Port came to be-- which is also how Houston came to be...
The Port of Houston: A History. By Marilyn McAdams Sibley. (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1968
The railroad closest to port operations is the Port Terminal Railroad Association
official site: http://www.ptra.com/
railfan site: http://www.trainweb.org/southwestshorts/ptra.html
history site: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/PP/eqpnf_print.html
Houston Belt & Terminal
railfan picture site: http://yardlimit.railfan.net/gallery/bn/hbt.html
diesel loco roster: http://www.thedieselshop.us/HBT.HTML
Houston Union Station architectural photo site: http://www.kingswayrc.com/gcst/union/union.htm
feature article HB&T Railfan Jan79 p.20
"Gurdy" rider combine "Weekend in Houston, 1948" Railfan Nov79 p.33-41
"The Texas Chemical Coast" extensive article on RR of Houston area in
relation to chemical traffic _Trains_ Oct99 p.36-49
One very good book on railroad in port of Houston area is an interurban book!
Robinson, Charles W. and Paul L. DeVerter III, Houston North Shore.
Continuing-- information about Houston -"where 23 railroads meet the sea" (slogan)
Houston may be thought of as a clock face with rail lines radiating out.
12 o"clock high (due north) Houston and Great Northern RR became> International & Great Norrthern (IGN) > New Orleans, Texas & Mexico (MP subsidiary) > Missouri Pacific Gulf Coast Lines > Union Pacific
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/II/eqi4.html
12:30 on the dial: Houston East & West Texas Rwy (aka "Hell Either Way Taken"; aka "the Rabbit"). Houston to Shreveport; became Southern Pacific. Now UP.
Book: Maxwell, Robert S. Whistle in the Piney Woods 1963, reprinted 1998. Website: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HH/eqh14.html
About 2 o'clock: Beaumont, Sour Lake & Western/ New Orleans, Texas & Mexico-- became MP Gulf Coast Lines, MP. Now UP. Some information about this line in a rare old book: Allhands, James L. Railroads to the Rio, 1960. Website: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HH/eqh14.html
About 2:30: Texas & New Orleans, "The Sunset Route"-- became Southern Pacific, now UP. Website: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/eqt6.html
Houston North Shore Railway (built as interurban), became Missouri Pacific, now UP . book: Houston North Shore. webpage: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HH/eqh12.html
Texas Transportation Company. became SP, (UP?) webpage: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/eqt17.html
Houston Belt & Magnolia Park RR. narrative _Houston Electric_ p.24. Became part of IGN, therefore part of Houston Belt and Terminal. i LIVED NEXT TO THIS LINE FOR 21 YEARS, AND STILL SEE IT WHEN i VISIT MY PARENTS' HOME
Port Terminal Railroad Association (previously referenced)
Approximately 3 o'clock on the dial: Galveston, La Porte & Houston Rwy. Webpage: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/GG/eqg9.html
That takes us 1/4 of the way around Houston. More later.
Continuing-- the railroads around Houston, like spokes on a wheel or hours on a clock. We last stopped at 3PM, now continuing clockwise...
Galveston Houston and Henderson> jointly owned by Missouri Kansas & Texas of Texas and IGN (MP subsidiary)> Union Pacific
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/GG/eqg7.html
Galveston-Houston Electric Railway Co.; book: Herb Woods, Galveston-Houston Electric Railway (Los Angeles: Electric Railway Publications, 1959). (reprinted, Interurbans, 1976)
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/EE/eqe12.html
Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/GG/eqg25.html
Houston Tap & Brazoria> Houston & Great Northern> IGN> MP> abandoned ca. 1980. This would be about 5:30 on the clock face...
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HH/eqh13.html
Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado- first railroad in Texas, from Harrisburg across south side of Houston, just south of Astrodome, leaving Houston in southwesterly direction toward Sugarland. became Galveston, Houston and San Antonio, became Texas and New Orleans, Southern Pacific Lines Sunset Route, became Union Pacific. About 7:30 on the clock system...
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/BB/eqb16.html
San Antonio and Aransas Pass, became Southern Pacific Bellaire branch. (There is a book on S.A.A.P. but I don't think it has much on the Houston line.)
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/SS/eqs6.html
Texas Western Narrow Gauge
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/eqtpg.html
Missouri, Kansas and Texas of Texas, merged into UP and abandoned west of Loop610. Due west from Houston, "9 o'clock"
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/MM/eqm8.html
Houston and Texas Central, became T&NO
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HH/eqh9.html
Texas & Brazos Valley, became Burlington Rock Island Joint Texas Line, became BN, Rock dropped out, now BNSF. A good book on the T&BV is Teague, Texas and the Boll Weevill by Brad Spoor and Hol Wagner, Burlington Bulletin #19, April 1988.
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/CC/eqc14.html
Houston Heights Railroad, ran from SP Houston & Texas Central about 2 miles north into the Heights, crossing MKT with a "stop" sign for protection (I think I have pix of the Xing)
That's all the Houston railroads I can think of, unless you count the Light Rail... But then we were interested in railroads tied into a Texas seaport in the 1930s. I found a page from a Port of Houston promotional book of 1930 that lists all the industries along the ship chanhnel with their locations. I'll transcribe that another time.
Port of Houston industries in 1930
Industries on the north side of the ship channel, from the turning basin southeast
Singer Iron and Steel Co.
Turning Basin Compress
Port City Compress
Houston Terminal Oil Co.
Public Grain Elevator
Industries on the south side of the ship channel, from the turning basin to Brady Island
Patrick Transfer and Storage Co.
Houston Oil Terminal Co.
Tex-Cuban Molasses Co.
Armour Fertilizer Works
Houston Compress Co.
Ship Channel Compress
Terminal Compress and Warehouse Co.
Industries on the north side of the ship channel, Galena Park area (west to east)
Humble Oil and Refining Co.
Carnegie Steel Co.
Morgan Line- S.P. Terminal
Gulf Compress Co.
Clarion Oil Co.
Gulf Refining Co.
Texas-Galena Oil Co.
Industries on the south side of the ship channel, Brady Island to Sims Bayou
Texas Chemical Co.
Deepwater Oil Refinery
Magnolia Petroleum Co.
Lone Star Cement Co.
Channel Fuel Co.
American Maid Flour Mill
Manchester Public Wharf
Fireboat station
Hayden Shell Rig- shipyard
Manchester Terminal Corp.
Sinclair Refining Co.
Houston Light and Power co,
from a map in the May 1930 issue of Houston Port and City
A diagram of some of the tracks around the busiest end of the Port of Houston in 1939. This is from a port promotional and informational brochure. The Turning Basin is the farthest point upstream navigable by ocean-going vessels. About midway on the left side of this diagram, Buffalo Bayou continues to the west allowing shallow-draft barges almost to the city center. A Southern Pacific track crosses this bayou just upstream of the Turning Basin on a center-axis swing bridge. I have some photos of the bridge I will post later.
The orange diagonal line across the top of the picture is an SP line originally called the Texas Transportation Company, a shortline railroad running just north of Buffalo Bayou to connect downtown Houston to a Morgan Lines dock about 10 miles east of Houston, near a locality now called Galena Park. This line gave SP access to many industries along the port. A fascinating double underpass in the upper left corner of the diagram carried Clinton Drive under the SP/ TTCo line. The line was north of Clinton between downtown and the underpass, but south of Clinton from the underpass to the east end of the line.,
The orange line that crosses the swing bridge and runs more or less north and south connected the SP lines north of the bayou and channel to a point about 2 miles south, Harrisburg, a bayou-port which predated the existence of Houston. Harrisburg was the terminus of Texas' first railroad, the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado which became part of the SP. Harrisburg was also a junction with an SP-owned line that ran east along the south side of the ship channel to LaPorte and then south along the shore of Galveston Bay to Texas City and Galveston.
If you modeled this SP track across the bridge, the operation would include an SP switch job to industries and port facilities on the south side of the ship channel, local traffic to industries between Harrisburg and LaPorte, and through freight for Texas City and Galveston. It would also carry a short passenger train to run between Houston and Galveston.
Port of Houston track diagram 1939. Click image to enlarge.
The uncolored tracks belonged to the Public Belt Railway, which later became the Port Terminal Railroad Association, a common switching line doing work in the port for all the trunkline railroads. The Public Belt had a yard in the upper left corner of the diagram where it interchanged with the Houston Belt and Terminal. From there, one line paralleled the SP/ TTCo line on the NORTH side of Clinton, but it cross Clinton AND the SP tracks to give access to the north side of the port at several points. The SP had its own access to some warehouses at the northeast corner of the Turning Basin, while the Public Belt also had its access to nearby wharks and an entry to the big Public Grain Elevator. The parallel railroads crossing each other to claim their access to specific industry sites might make an interesting operation.
The Public Belt used the SP bridge to get to the south side of the Turning Basin, then went off onto its own rails to a small yard called Mackie Dee Yard. An "unrealistic" and "unprototype-like" roundy-round loop of track gave access to wharfs just to the south of the Turning Basin. From there, switching continued for miles and miles along the south side of the ship channel.
In the late 19th century, a steam-dummy-operated traction line was built to Magnolia Park, promoted as the site of a future port. It ran about a mile to the south of Buffalo Bayou from downtown to a point about a mile south of what became the Turning Basin. International and Great Northern bought the line, shown in blue, and it later became part of Missouri Pacific. UP continues to operate this line.
About a mile to the south of the area shown in this track diagram, the MKT-MP jointly-owned Galveston, Houston and Henderson Railroad skirted the south edge of the Harrisburg community, and there, it could interchange with the Public Belt to reach the Port.
Trynn_Allen2 wrote:So do you know if those are R or S class Subs? Any shots of the conning tower?
Sorry, my dad shot several detail pix of Old Ironsides, but just one of the subs. Sort of a picture to say, look what else was there. It is known they were there accompanying Old Ironsides on the 1932 tour. You might google that tour for information about Navy escort vessels.
The Southern Pacific (now Union Pacific) drawbridge shown along the right side of the plan view of the Port of Houston Turning Basin would an interesting part of a model scene representing railroads around that port, whether modeled as the 1930s or the 2000s. The bridge stills exists and must still be operable, though rarely opened. The Federal Register for November 26, 2003 said the bridge was to be closed to navigation from December 10 to December 21, 2003 to allow replacement of a diesel motor to turn the bridge. Corps of Engineers/ Homeland Security call for the bridge to be opened on signal from vessels if at least 24 hours advance notice is given. Requests to open the bridge are infrequent. The November 26 notice said that the last time the bridge had been opened was April 14.
Vertical clearance is 34 feet above mean low water. A 1928 port promotional publication describes the ground elevation behind all wharves approximately 35 to 40 feet. I could not find an official dimension for the length but measuring by six locomotives in the photo, estimated to average 60' long, would make the bridge 360 feet long. (By the way, this is a composite of 2 photos taken a few seconds apart so the same locos appear on both sides of the picture, taken ca. 1986. The photo was taken from a public park, upstream of the bridge and on the south side of Buffalo Bayou.) The bridge turns on a center support, located at the south side of the Buffalo Bayou channel. Traffic upstream of this bridge is primarily tugs and barges.
For a model scene, the bridge would be a good feature toward the back of the layout, while dockside switching trackage would be closer to the operator at a slightly lower level. Through SP trains would occasionally circuit across this bridge going to supposedly distant offscene locations, while the bridge would occasionally carry cuts of cars being transferred to one of the modeled dock, wharf and warehouse tracks. Since the bridge rarely turns, it would make it easier to build as a non-operating model, and it could be located closer top a background than clearance for turning would require.
Any commercial product that could be used to model this bridge? I notice the originator of this thread asking for Texas seaport railroad information had the name "ssgauge", so maybe he is building in S. I couldn't find anything in S scale, though I don't have much knowledge of S scale resources.
In HO scale, the closest thing I could find in the Walther's catalog was a Vollmer metal arch bridge, 19 ½ " long which works out to about 141 scale feet-- a lot less than the 300' or more prototype.
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/770-2560
Maybe the best bet would be scratchbuilding with Plastruct structural members and Central Valley truss parts but it would not be a two evening project.
Not the era being discussed, but I love this "bird's-eye view" of Galveston in 1885. A railroad on stilts.
Crews
ssgauge wrote: Any suggestions on books or websites about Texas ports...
I have just found the "mother lode" of websites about the Port of Houston, an online archive of complete port information magazines going back to the 1920s, with issues available in pdf format in their entirety. Home page:
http://www.portarchive.com/
Link to entire May 1929 issue (typical content on this site)
http://www.portarchive.com/1929/1929%20May%20Volume.19%20No.1%20Page%201%20to%2018.pdf
Nearly 20 years ago, I found copies of 2 issues of their publication in a university library, copied dozens of pages and have studied them over and over and over. Now I have access to many times this information. Prepare to be kept busy.
Incredible source of information, especially from 1939, the time I intend to model..thank you!
Regarding pier/rail operations, I'm assuming the tracks on piers in Houston are usually used to unload freight into (or out of) railcars from (or to) the pier's warehouse or transit shed, which in turn is used to store freight unloaded from ships, or to hold freight until loaded onto ships. Is that correct? As I mentioned before, my primary familiarity with port operations is based on what I've observed in Seattle in the 1950s on the older piers...I don't want to mistakenly assume all ports operate the same way. One reason I ask is that the Port of Houston articles seem to draw a distinction between "shipside" tracks and those "behind" pier warehouses. That suggests freight may be directly transferred between railcars and ships??
I have seen quite a few pictures of "shipside" rail spurs being used to load and unload what I call "open loads" directly to and from ships... articles usually carried in gondolas or flatcars, such as drilling pipe, heavy machinery, vehicles, logs etc. In those cases, a crane or hoist can lift or lower a load directly on or off a railcar, and swing it on or off a ship.
I believe commodities, the kind of thing loaded in and out of a boxcar door such as bales of cotton, bales of wool and mohair, bagged grain, flour, raw sugar, raw coffee, manufactured goods in small to medium crates... etc (LOTS of etc) usually handled through warehouse. This is slightly indirect. The advantage is that the ship does not have to wait its schedule on switching of railcars, and railcars do not have to be held if a ship is late, etc. It allows for some "slack" in scheduling of the operation.
The same kind of "slack" occurs in bulk commodity transfer, such as bulk grain (not bagged) between railcar, terminal elevator and ship, or tankage for liquid loads.
An exception is uncovered unprotected bulk solid loads such as rail-to-ship ore dock operations, or unloading coal, coke or "clinkers" from ship at a bulk material handling dock to railcars. I have seen a shipment in the Port of Corpus Christi where pelletized iron ore was unloaded from a ship by a giant clamshell scooper some 12 or 15 stories tall, dumped (with some "slack" via a hopper) into railcars. A hundred or more railcars would be held for unloading the ship. Regular hopper cars, not shorty ore jimmies, were used, filled only "one third full" (by volume) by FULL by weight capacity. I was making a newsreel and photographed a train from an overpass so that you could see the "almost-empty" looking hoppers passing. The ore was shipped to Corpus Christi to be rail-transported across the lower tip of Texas as a route into smelters northern Mexico.
Corpus Christi is another story, and I will get to it when I finish with Houston, Matagorda, Palacios, Port LaVaca, and Rockport-Fulton. And then I will still have Riviera Beach and Brownsville- Port Isabel. This is getting to be a long drawn-out thread answering your request about Texas Seaport Railroading, but hey, there is a lot to tell.
THE SPOT WHERE TEXAS RRs STARTED
would be a good scene for a model railroad representing the Texas Gulf Coast in the 1920s through the 1950s. That spot is HARRISBURG, a neighborhood in Houston which used to be a town of its own, in fact a town that preceded Houston. Harrisburg is where Brays Bayou flows into the Houston Ship Channel, which was once Buffalo Bayou before it was widened and deepened to make a world class port. On a street map, Harrisburg Boulevard (once Harrisburg ROAD) runs east by southeast from downtown Houston and makes a sharp turn due south just before reaching the Ship Channel. With that turn, the street changes name to Broadway and one enters what used to be Harrisburg.
If you use GoogleEarth or a mapping program, go to 95º 16' 44"W 29º 43' 41"N
When Texas was part of Mexico, Harrisburg was a settlement where shallow-draft boats on Buffalo Bayou could load and unload. After Texas won its independence in 1836, the Allen brothers came to speculate on land at Harrisburg expecting a boom, but the burning of a courthouse during the war caused title problems in the town. They picked a point to lay out a townsite at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou, the farthest upstream they figured could be navigable. They named their town after the hero of San Jacinto, General Sam Houston.
In 1850, a railroad was chartered to run, not from Houston, but from Harrisburg, to plantations at Richmond and Wharton. The first rails were laid in 1851 from a landing alongside Brays Bayou and then south (bypassing Houston, by the way!) That railroad was the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado, later to become part of the Galveston, Houston and San Antonio, and later, Southern Pacific.
Below is a map of the "Harrisburg" section of Houston as it was from about the 1920s through the 1950s, with the present-day bayou channel and street alignment shown in dotted lines. This is about a half mile south of Booth Yard on the bottom right corner of the 1939 Turning Basin trackage map I posted earlier.
The old original BBB&C line did not cross Bray's Bayou but started there and ran south. The Ship Channel was constructed in the 19-teens and a Public Belt railway established in the 1920s to provide port switching services. The Public Belt trackage was operated by the Port Terminal Railway ASSOCIATION, an organization of the trunkline railroads serving the city, and the Port railroad came to be known by the initials of the Association, PTRA. PTRA built a track south from Booth Yard to cross Brays Bayou on a timber pile trestle shown on the left side of this map. That line briefly joined the BBB&C track, then cut away to swing east along the south side of the Ship Channel. (not shown on this map)
Meanwhile, the stub of the former BBB&C, by then part of SP, was extended to cross Brays Bayou going north to access part of the port. It crossed Brays Bayou on a quaint little vertical lift bridge. This was not a huge truss bridge like the Cape Cod, Mass lift bridge, shown in Model Railroader Oct06 p.68. It was a deck girder bridge, somewhat similar to the MicroEngineering deck girder bridge in HO.
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/255-75501
I copied this photo some 20 years ago from an old Port of Houston promotional magazine of 1939 found in the engineering library of Texas A&M University at College Station.
I recently discovered that many historic back issues of this port publication is available online, and this photo is on p.29 of a pdf file at:
http://www.portarchive.com/1939/Volume%2018%20November,%201939%20Number%202%20Page%2021%20to%2042.pdf
I measured the image of some of the people in the photo and came up with a guesstimate of a scale of 9.33 pixels/prototype foot in the plane of the near side of the bridge...
Ht of standing man 55 pixels 5.9 feet
Bottom of raised bridge above water 164 px 17 ft 7 inches
Top of bridge deck above water 211 px 22 ft 7 inches
Length of moveable span 344 px 36 ft 10 in.
Normal track level above water 119 px 12 ft 9 inches
Max hit of vertical supports above water 241 px 25 ft 10 in.
Another interesting and modelgenic part of the scene is the "New" Terminal Warehouse, shown in this photo I took in 1989.
It is 4 stories, concrete frame, masonry curtain wall. A Sanborn's map showed it as built min 1912. I remember how dramatic this corner seemed in the 1950s when we drove around the sharp curve that dropped down from Harrisburg Boulevard at left and crossed a concrete bridge- where there is now the old bridge pier at right bottom. Then the road rose again The little vertical lift railroad bridge was to the right of this pix. To the left of this view in the 1950s was the Public Belt/ PTRA line crossing Brays Bayou on a trestle, and crossing Harrisburg Boulevard at grade, elevation about 35 feet.
By the 1980s, the PTRA line was raised on a grade separation over Harrisburg Boulevard, and it crossed Brays Bayou on a concrete trestle. The sharp curve and the down-and-up ride for motorists was replaced with a concrete viaduct from which this photo was taken.
Almost everything in this photo except the bayou and the modern auto viaduct are gone. The "New" Terminal Warehouse was demolished for a container terminal. The old road that runs up to the old bridge pier was replaced with a "turnaround" and observation area.