Nostalgia & History > Depot Friday

Freight car friday? Naw, it's Depot friday!

The first two are of the Santa Fe's depot at Slaton ( pronounced Slay-ton ) Texas, Slaton was a neat well contained division point on the Santa Fe thirty years + ago, I wonder it it still is now that it's part of the BNSF?

The last image is of what used to be the Santa Fe depot in downtown Weatherford Texas. While Weatherford was on the Texas & Pacific mainline about 30 miles west of Fort Worth, the Santa Fe ran into Weatherford on a branchline many many years ago. When I took this picture, there was a neat little local museum headquartered there. They had a former T&P business car, a T&P "Muley" caboose, and a small steam loco stuffed & mounted on the outside depot grounds. I can't recall what type of steamer this was nor where it had come from. I understand that this museum quit its existence as a museum several years back, and that the rolling stock was moved somewhere else too. Tomstp, do you or anybody else have any updates about this?

Con

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Yes sir. Depot is now the Chamber of Commerce for Weatherford. The caboose was a Santa Fe side door caboose. It had fallen on hard times but, was rehabed and now looks good and is under a shed. All the other cars are gone as is the 2-6-0. It came from a logging outfit in East Texas. I'm having a senior moment right now and can't remember the owner. When I remember I will PM you.

All track has been torn out and now a big supermarket is just north of the old depot. There is only one "company" siding in Weatheford now. No industry tracks what-so-ever. Fact is on the T&P only one industry siding is active between Ft Worth and Abilene and that is a Grain store in Aledo that gets about 5 to 8 cars a week. There used to be about 100 active sidings in the 1950-1960's. When UP re-did the track in the late 1990s all switches to all the old sidings were torn out. Such is the state of todays railroads.

I believe the Slaton Division was abolished in the late '60's or early '70's and road crews change in Lubbock now

See my 2007 post for a contemporary view of the Weatherford, Texas station. http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?5,1406175,1406175#msg-1406175

Cheers,
Jack

I htjink the road crews run Sweetwater-Clovis or Sweetwater-Amarillo. Lubbock is not a crew change point. Locals and switchers go on duty there, though.

JMM

Slaton as it appears today.

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DublinDistrict Wrote:
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> Slaton as it appears today.


Doesn't appear to have changed much since I was last there in 1983, and that's good.

Con