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Day in North America: December 28, 2005
Tracing the T&P through North Texas
Text and photos by Wes Carr
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My goal for Day in North America 2005 was to capture a series of three images which tied
together the historical and modern eras of Union Pacific's former T&P (Texas &
Pacific) rail lines in north Texas. My day, which began with a shot of a stack train
in the former T&P town of Weatherford, was a trip back in time from the present-day
UP to the Missouri Pacific (T&P's longtime parent) to the T&P itself.
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1) Located about 30 miles west of Fort Worth, the north Texas town of Weatherford gained
rail service in 1880 when the Texas & Pacific Railroad built west through town, its
sights set on the Pacific coast. Now part of the Union Pacific Baird Subdivision,
the former T&P route through Weatherford sees 20 to 30 trains a day, many of them
high priority intermodal trains moving between California and the Dallas-Fort Worth
or Memphis areas.
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In the wake of the Christmas holidays, rail traffic through
Weatherford on the morning of December 28, 2005 was a little on the quiet side.
But there was nothing quiet about eastbound ITIMN, blasting past the town's old T&P
depot at 9:13 a.m.
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2) Twenty-three years after UP's acquisition of the Missouri Pacific, and nearly thirty
years after MP assumed full control of the T&P, it's still possible to trace the
heritage of UP's former T&P lines in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Certain railway
bridges, for example, still display "T&P Rwy" signs. And evidence abounds on the
company's rolling stock. Pay close attention to a passing train or examine idle cars
on an industrial spur; MP buzzsaw and eagle logos can be seen daily throughout north
Texas on the sides of boxcars, hoppers, and gondolas.
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Such was the case on December
28, 2005 in Roanoke, a burgeoning community located along the UP Choctaw Subdivision
between Fort Worth and Denton. Texas & Pacific constructed the southern portion
of the Choctaw in 1880 to complete a secondary main line from Texarkana to Fort Worth
via Paris and Sherman. 125 years later in Roanoke, memories remain: a MoPac "Screaming
Eagle" logo adorns the side of a covered hopper awaiting unloading at Texas Lehigh
Cement. The eagle may be sun-bleached and faded, but it's still visible,
reminding me that before there was a Union Pacific in north Texas, there was a
Missouri Pacific; and before there was a MoPac, there was a T&P.
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3) Thirty years after the death of a railroad, nearly all traces of its existence have
been erased, expunged, eradicated. A few, however, always seem to remain, and not
always in the likeliest of places. On December 28, 2005, I visited the city of Dallas
and located a surviving relic of the Texas & Pacific -- a massive, mural
advertisement on the side of the brick building amidst trendy nightclubs and loft
apartments on the edge of the downtown area.
Complete with the T&P diamond emblem,
the ad proudly endorses the combined T&P/MP's service from Dallas to St. Louis in
23 hours, a rate of speed which seems laughably slow in the era of hourly non-stop
airline service and 70 mph speed limits on Interstate highways. Even today's Amtrak
Texas Eagle, a train not generally known its rapid rate of speed, is scheduled
to make the trip between the two cities in a third less time. But the ad remains,
recalling a more dignified era of travel when customer service and passenger comfort
were just as important as speed.
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A modern-day stack train passing an aging depot; a fallen flag logo on the side of a
rusty freight car; a fading ad from a railroad 30 years gone, flanked by a Saab
convertible and a Ford F-150 pickup. These three images remind me of the possibility
of traveling from the present to the past and back again -- all in a single day in
North America.
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