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More San Antonio Missouri Pacific station information

In early 2006, an intriguing folder was located at the Texas Transportation Museum detailing an abortive effort on the part of the museum to acquire in 1971 the recently shuttered Missouri Pacific station at the corner of Commerce and Medina Streets. Included in the copious but ultimately fruitless correspondence, which includes letters to and from MOPAC, the San Antonio mayor, the San Antonio Conservation Society and even US Representative Henry B. Gonzalez, were a number of tiny photographs and an undated area map detail showing the location of many forgotten aspects of MOPAC's operations in down town San Antonio.

Modern technology has allowed for a generous enlargement of the photographs. Included are some extremely rare images of the baggage room and REA offices located immediately behind the station. More searching just might reveal images of the freight house and the turntable on the other side of the tracks, now we know what to look for.

The area map brings back to light certain forgotten aspects of Missouri Pacific's business activities in down town San Antonio. Prior to the construction of the large road bridge that carries traffic high over the tracks on Commerce Street, which was completed in the 1960s, the area immediately in front of the station was a hive of commercial activity, with not only the freight depot but also a post office, a bus station and numerous cafes, bars, hotels and drug stores, a candle factory, feed stores, a rubber company and, of course, a Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Even more surprising is the massive turn table on the other side of the ten sets of tracks that were in place over Commerce Street. Until this undated map fragment was found there was no record of this facility, though it was known that there was another turn table at the huge MOPAC "South San" freight yard on Quintana Road.

Missouri Pacific locomotives assigned to the San Antonio area were given numbers in the 1000 range. Many were previously owned by smaller companies acquired by MOPAC. Often an identifier of its origin would be maintained on the locomotive, although exactly what purpose this served in unclear. The round house at Commerce and Comal was once a bustling place, as was the whole area. High school students were employed to take train orders by bicycle from the signal tower near the old freight house to crews waiting in the often stifling locomotive cabs. One such young man in the early 1940s was Chuck Hustler who soon enlisted in the navy. We are grateful to Keith Jordan, a recently retired MOPAC engineer, for these latest pictures of the area.

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