I know this is a shot in the dark, but my wife and I were doing a tour of tiny towns in Central Texas, and she spied (got her well trained!) a couple of ancient railroad bridge supports off of FM576 at Big Sandy Creek - a few miles southwest of Breckenridge. Neither the "Right Of Way" book nor the Abandoned Rails website mention anything about a former right of way here. Does anyone know anything about this?

Try bridgehunter.com go to the location tab, then Texas, then the county it's in. They don't have everything but the site is pretty extensive.

Regards,

Art S.

I think I found your bridge foundations. In looking at the area on Google Earth, the highway bridge looks to be fairly new and there is a shoofly leading from the highway to the bridge foundations. My guess is that the foundations are from a temporary road bridge that was built while the highway bridge was replaced. I can't find a railroad anywhere around there. The nearest one is the Texas Central Railroad that is quite a ways southwest from Breckenridge.

Wichita Falls & Southern? It went through Breckenridge. Met the Texas & Pacific there.
abandoned 1954 .

Mark Thomas

Thanks for the responses. I bought SPV's comprehensive Railroad Atlas for Texas. It looks like a line named the Cisco & North Eastern might be the railroad that used that bridge. Does anyone know anything about that line?

See if S.G. Reed's Railroads of Texas has anything on the Cisco & Northeastern. Also, a small piece on Lee, the founder of the road can be found in Wikipedia.

There is only one paragraph in the Reed book that is pretty much contained in the Texas Handbook article:

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/eqc12

The line ran straight south from Breckenridge. I still think we're dealing with a road bridge.

Further southwest are some remnants of the Texas Central Railroad that parallels Highway 6 north of Moran. There is a bridge foundation and north of that are some bridge or trestle pilings.

I grew up in Cisco, and the C&NE right of way is still visible along US 183 between Cisco and Breckenridge. I agree with Charlie, I think the remains of the bridge in question belong to an old highway. The railroad ROW basically follows US 183; in the 70's (when I was in high school), there were still some trestle piles remaining.

In Cisco, the Boss manufacturing plant (glove factory) occupied the old railroad shop building. There was a spur going to the plant; don't know when the siding or the switch off of the T&P /UP main was removed, but google earth shows no trace of either.

On Google maps, the Boss facility is now labeled Research and Advanced Methods. Given the nature of businesses in Cisco, I would guess it has something to do with the oil industry.

I guess I'm going to have to let my fantasy go that I had found some long ago forgotten right of way - it's a lot more fun than a old vehicular bridge. Still, it is seems really narrow for a road....

Something else to think about. All of the railroads built in that area, except the east / west T&P were built cheaply; with little ballast and wood trestles. The remains of that bridge look to be made of concrete; and I doubt the C&NE used concrete on any of its trestle piles.

My dad knew the C&NE's president, Mr. Lee; somewhere in storage I have a letter from Mr. Lee written on the stationary of the C&NE. Not sure how my dad acquired it, but I have it now.

Sorry that the bridge foundations didn't turn out to be more exciting than they were. Then again, I think that old road remnants are pretty interesting as well such as the remains of the Bankhead Highway. Frankly, any old man made structure in west Texas is pretty amazing given the conditions of the early 20th century.

Couple of comments:
1. Some old highway bridges were single lane affairs. I guess it saved on steel and expenses. Just remember to look before starting across -- in later years some had signal (traffic) lights.

2. Abandon highways can be interesting. Going through the Great Basin (i.e. Nevada) or other semi-arid areas old highway grades are very visible. Sometimes several generations of abandoned highways can be seen.

Also bear in mind that highways were relatively narrow back then. The Bankhead Highway was 16 feet wide except through railroad underpasses where it was considerably narrower. The Ridge Route in California was a winding and treacherous 15 foot wide road that connected LA to the San Joaquin Valley.