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A Day at Tower 17: Rosenberg, Texas
Please click the above image to see a larger version.
Scroll down past the intro to see the rest of the photos.
UPDATE
(May 2004) Rosenberg's Tower 17, the last traditional manned railroad interlocking tower in Texas, closed in February 2004.
Earlier this month, the tower was moved approximately a half-mile to the east, to the property of the Rosenberg Railroad
Museum. Unmanned steel signal bungalows now stand watch over
the newly automated interlocker; a Union Pacific dispatcher in nearby Spring (a Houston
suburb) controls the signals and switches at the crossing.
I had the
opportunity to visit the tower on three separate occasions during its final years of operation.
Please enjoy the following account of my first visit to Rosenberg's Tower 17 in February 2002.
* * * * *
Tower 17 is the last manned railroad interlocking tower in the state of Texas. To anyone
who's spent any length of time watching or photographing trains in Texas, this hardly
seems possible. I myself have been shooting photos of Texas trains for a mere 18 years,
and I've witnessed numerous towers become casualties of technology and automated operation:
North Tower, South Tower, and Tower 19 in Dallas; Tower 55 in Fort Worth; Tower 3 in
Flatonia; and Tower 16 in Sherman are just a few of them.
So Tower 17 is all that's left, but what a place it is... featuring a daily train
frequency well into the dozens and hosting the likes of UP, BNSF, Amtrak, and -- depending
on their routing -- KCS/TFM.
Situated just west of downtown Rosenberg, which itself is located roughly 35 miles
southwest of downtown Houston, the tower protects the busy crossing of the
BNSF (ex-ATSF) Galveston Sub between Temple and Galveston and the UP (ex-Southern
Pacific) Glidden Subdivision between San Antonio and Houston. The UP is the busier of
the two lines, hosting everything from transcontinental double stack trains to
rock shuttles of Texas limestone to
"rolling yards" -- drag freights well over a mile in length purged out by Houston's
Englewood or Settegast terminals. BNSF's Galveston Sub is no slouch, though,
as it hosts manifest freights and intermodal trains into and out of Houston / Galveston,
grain trains bound for the Port of Houston, and coal trains destined for Reliant
Engergy's Smithers Lake power plant 15 miles to the southeast.
If you spend any length of time at Tower 17, you'll likely see the trains of both UP and
BNSF operating over each other's tracks. In fact, there are so many trackage rights
trains operating on either line that the uninitiated observer could easily be forgiven
as to having no clue which line is which! Sometimes, even the railroads don't always seem
to be cut in on which trains will operate where until the very last minute. It's not
uncommon for the tower operator to be called upon to "hoop up orders" to a train whose
routing has suddenly been altered from the Galveston Sub to the Glidden line as it
approaches the tower.
Numerous UP trains utilize trackage rights over BNSF between Sealy (where the BNSF connects with an
ex-MKT line between Sealy and Smithville -- now UP's Smithville Subdivision) and Rosenberg,
where they return to UP trackage to reach
Houston over the Glidden Sub. Other UP trains continue on the BNSF Galveston Sub through Rosenberg
to Algoa
before returning to UP trackage. Conversely, BNSF trains use the UP Glidden Sub as a
shortcut between Rosenberg and Houston, a convenient alternative to its own lengthier
route southeast to Alvin and then angling back north to Houston over the Mykawa
Subdivision.
KCS / TFM trains running between Laredo and Houston frequently contribute additional
color and variety to the daily parade past Tower 17.
If it's Amtrak you want to see, pick one of the three days each week that the
Sunset Limited (trains 1 and 2) run in either direction. Check
http://www.amtrak.com for schedule and
location, and don't be surprised if the trains are running late. Not surprising for me was the
fact that, no sooner did I decide to take a brief respite from Tower 17 during my
recent visit to have lunch at a nearby Sonic, than eastbound # 2 made its Friday
appearance past the tower on the Glidden Sub. Consolation was provided, however, by
the fact that the rest of the afternoon and evening had the Rosenberg area literally
crawling with trains, sometimes with three or four trains in position waiting for
their chance to get across the interlocking. So scroll on down and have a look at the
photos I took on Friday, February 8, 2002, a cool and clear winter day which I carefully selected
with the interest of avoiding the heat and humidity which can plague the Texas gulf
coast from March through November. This was my first day at Tower 17:
Please click any of the following thumbnails to see a larger image.
I owe some special thanks to Stephen Foyt and Julian Erceg, who joined me during part
of my visit and whose knowledge of the area as "locals"
helped me to get a better handle on the rail traffic patterns and operational
intricacies of Rosenberg. Thanks, guys!
For information on the newly opened Rosenberg Railroad Museum,
located less than a half-mile
east of Tower 17, click here:
http://kstavino.home.texas.net/RosenbergRailroadMuseum.htm
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All photographs and text on the Southwest Railfan © 2000 - 2004 by Wes Carr.
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