Austin’s first railroad altered the city forever

The recent Austin Found column on the city’s first long bridge prompted related questions from readers, including: What was Austin’s first railroad?

Fascinated by this life-altering means of land transportation, I’ve written about the breakthrough Houston & Texas Central Railway — and Austin’s other railroads — before in this column.

There is more, however, to say about the inaugural line that arrived on Christmas Day 1871.

• The company that delivered rail service to Austin was chartered on March 11, 1848, as the Galveston and Red River Railway and became active in 1855. It did not, however, head to Austin at first, but rather, as the original name suggests, pushed north from the coast toward the Red River and the Great Plains and Mississippi Valley. It was part of a fan-shaped network of railroads that made Galveston and, after the 1900 hurricane, Houston the most important ports along the U.S. Gulf coast west of New Orleans.

• After the company’s renaming in 1856, the railroad stretched to a total of 81 miles until the Civil War broke out, which stalled further construction until 1867, along with almost all building in the still-new frontier state. The prime push to the north then aimed to link with existing lines that reached Chicago, St. Louis and other metropolises that dwarfed any market in Texas.

• Another company altogether, the Washington County Railroad, actually initiated the route west toward Austin. H&TC purchased it — as well as the Austin and Northwestern, the line into the Hill Country that hauled granite blocks to the Capitol construction site in the 1880s — and bonded both to the tree-shaped H&TC network.

• The H&TC, which arrived at its original Austin terminus along East Fifth Street alongside a city market just north of Brush Square, promoted a brief business boom locally. It was the only railroad in the region and a far superior way of moving people and goods than alternately muddy or dusty roads that served Central Texas prior to 1871. Just think of all the precious building supplies, raw materials, clothing, food, visitors and newcomers it delivered to the tiny capital city of 4,000 souls, which grew by almost 150 percent during the following decade.

• Overnight Pullman car service began between Houston and Austin 1872. “It was the first Pullman service offered in Texas,” says cartoonist and railroad buff Ben Sargent, “and that it gained notoriety in 1949 when a porter, trying to wake Gov. Beauford Jester on arrival in Houston, instead found he had expired in the night.”

• H&TC went through several ownerships and managements over the next decades. “It came under control of Southern Pacific interests in 1883,” Sargent says. “In 1927, it was leased to the Southern subsidiary, Texas & New Orleans, and merged into the T&NO in 1934. So it was, from '83 on, always part of the Southern Pacific. It wasn't owned at any time by the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, but the confusion may arise from the fact that after 1904, when the Katy built into Austin from the north, MKT passenger trains going from Dallas-Fort Worth to San Antonio used trackage rights over the H&TC to get from Austin back to MKT rails at San Marcos.”

• The H&TC built a grand terminal of brick and stone at East Third Street and Congress Avenue in 1902. Right across the avenue rose the equally grand station for the International and Great Northern Railway, which, after heading west toward South Lamar Boulevard, branched north and south on what is now the city’s main north-south line, best seen along MoPac (Loop 1), a name passed down from the days when the same railroad was part of the Missouri and Pacific empire.

• It’s a shame that neither of those downtown train stations survived. They were not as inspiring as the union stations in bigger, older cities — consider New York’s Grand Central Station, for instance — but they were among the most substantial local structures built here during the era of the railroad.

• In 1986, the city of Austin purchased 167 miles of the old H&TC railroad from Giddings through Austin to Llano with the prospect of turning parts of those routes into commuter lines. The Austin Steam Train Association uses these tracks from Cedar Park to Bertram and on to Burnet for its Saturday and Sunday rides. In 2008, Capital MetroRail, which connects northwest suburbs with the central city, opened its temporary downtown station on East Fourth and Neches streets on the south side of the same square where trains originally arrived in 1871.

MORE ON AUSTIN RAIL

History center exhibit tracks the rise and fall of Austin streetcars

Where did Austin's railroads go?

Austin Found

You can’t understand New Austin without delving into Old Austin. Send questions about how our city got this way to mbarnes@statesman.com.