I've been going over a Cotton Belt Railroad employee timetable from 1972 trying to retrace some of the operations of the railroad in Fort Worth. For those who may not know, the freight railroad property that makes up the bulk of the TexRail project from Fort Worth to Grapevine was previously owned and operated by the St. Louis - Southwestern Railway, a.k.a. the "Cotton Belt".
Most freight trains into Fort Worth terminated at Hodge Yard, which is located between Deen Road and Sylvania north of Long Avenue and runs underneath I-35W. [I'd love to know the history of the name Hodge for this area, but that's another topic.] However, the tracks continued farther to the southwest to the large interlocking near the stockyards called Tower 60 and continued somewhere beyond that point about two miles to Fifth Street Station.
Does anyone remember this station and exactly where it was located? There is a reference to the Belknap overpass in the timetable in the portion describing operations to Fifth Street Station, so I suspect it was located somewhere near Tower 55.
I know that Cotton Belt had a track continue across Tower 60 southwesterly from the stockyards parallel to the former Frisco tracks which are today used by the Fort Worth and Western. This served a few industries in the area that will become Panther Island (anyone remember the tracks running down Commerce Street?). It also happened to run right by 5th Street to the old power plant just west of Main Street.
The reference to the Belknap overpass is a pretty strong clue, but I haven't found anything else to help me locate this station. If anyone has any information or recollections of the Cotton Belt in Fort Worth, I'd enjoy reading your responses.