Please see the following link for a trackside view of the Paducah, TX depot. http://www.depotmaps.com/Images/DepotTX/PaducahTX.jpg http://www.flickr.com/photos/old-curmudgeon/1122476050/sizes/o/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/99491151@N00/3204820723/sizes/l/ (rear) The depot's agent / operator bay faces northwest. The depot was constructed in 1916. Railroad west is to the right. The building in the background south of the depot is the Quanah Cotton Oil Company seed warehouse number 1. The depot is now home of the Cottle County Heritage Museum. The depot address is 590 9th Street (a/k/a North US Highway 83). Hope this helps. Thanks! Mark
Again, another fine renovation of a great historical building. It is amazing how some of these old depots rise from the grave and given new life with just some TLC. Terry
Just returned from a visit to Texas to check on my parents and see my brother in Knox City, TX. I had hoped to visit the museum in the Paducah, TX, depot, but the timing did not work out. In case anyone wonders, the museum is alive and well. It is manned and open on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. There are several rooms of historical material, according to the woman I spoke with. I drove by it this morning, but it was not open since it is Wednesday. It looks the same as it has for several years. Paul Moore
I was there a couple years ago and actually found it open. The lady curator spent a lot of time on a ranch just a few miles away from Swearingen. Which was quite the town back in the heyday of the QA&P. There are a lot of railroad images on the walls but it is more of a cowboy, ranch museum than a railroad museum. There is a great deal of history in that little Texas town and some world famous people are from there. Make sure you take a look at the north wall outside and see where many soldiers carved their names on the wall, before boarding a train that took them to war, and many didn't come home alive. That was a neat little town, had its own Coke bottling plant too. If you ever find a Coke bottle that has Paducah TX on the bottom it is real rare. I still need to upload the images I took from inside the museum in Paducah and Quanah. While in the QA&P museum ask about the QA&P depot, jail, they are close to HO scale.
Tom, Thanks for all the information. I would love to move back to that area and settle there. We are nearly retired, real estate in Colorado Springs is nuts, and Colorado Springs has grown so much that I really do not like it anymore. While in west Texas I looked at a few properties for sale. My wife and I plan to go back in early January so she can see the area. At that time I will make a point to see the inside of the museum. If I had a dream, it would be to buy an old depot, convert part into my living quarters, and use the rest as a railroad museum and layout facility. Thanks, Paul
Paul, There is a big old red freight depot in Quanah just waiting for you to put your name on! LOL Tom, My Spousal Unit and I were in Quanah later part of April. We stopped at the museum for about an hour. She and I loved it, but we had to hustle down the road for a dinner meeting with "Santa Fe Willie" near Sanger. I sure like the countryside around where Willie is.
Next trip down I will look for that freight depot. The area around Sanger / Gainesville / Muenster is definitely nice. Paul
Great stuff Paul and Sherrel, Paul, There is an antique building on the South side of Highway 287 on the East end of Quanah that has a little bit of QA&P stuff but they think it is gold laced. I was not impressed by it. Yea there is a great deal of history down there for sure. I hope the real estate bubble does not bust before you can make the move. No doubt the dollar goes a long way as far as housing goes, but you have to drive 30 miles to find a Wally World. Sherrel, I remember how depressed these little towns are compared to when I was there as a kid. I mean there were jobs to be had and the movie theaters were going, the theater in Paducah still had "True Grit" on the marquee. So, that tells you how long that has been shut down. Hard folks down there, hard as woodpecker lips. I remember talking with Santa Fe Willie on another site, but I have to tell you I am having a hard time keeping up with the couple I look at now.
You are right, farming is not doing well. The equipment has gotten ridiculously expensive, $400,000 for a full size tractor. The seed, spray, etc., are all more expensive. As a result, most farmers either fold or stay in debt and farm huge tracts of land. However, the cycle seems to be 5-8 years. I think that if we do something soon, we would be hitting it at the bottom of the cycle, and it might come back a tiny bit. But we are not doing it as an investment, but as a lifestyle change. The places we have looked at are about 15 minutes south of Knox City, TX. There is a Walmart 20 minutes away in Stamford, TX. There is a hospital in Knox City and one in Haskel, TX. There is a medical evacuation helicopter right in Knox City. Abilene, TX and Wichita Falls, TX are about an hour away for major stuff. How far can you drive in a large city in 20 minutes in the traffic? Then there is crime, which is virtually non-existent in the area of Texas we are looking at. Since the marijuana law passed in Colorado, crime in Colorado Springs has risen dramatically and from what I have heard, in all of the urban areas. A Sheriff's deputy told me that Mexican drug cartels have bought up large tracts of land east of Colorado Springs and built huge grow houses. It is not the same place it was 15 years ago. Anyway, we are examining options and considering relocating. On a more positive note, attached are photographs of the Rule, TX, and Knox City, TX, depots. They are both former Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (ATSF) and before that former Kansas City, Mexico and Orient (KCM&O) depots. Maybe one of them could be purchased by an enterprising person and turned into a model railroad building or museum! Paul
I did a Valentine's Day trip with my wife and Maggie-the-dog to visit friends in Paducah, TX for lunch and see the depot museum. We called ahead and Sammie Thompson, the curator, said "Come on by!". So we did, and spent an hour with Sammie and her husband Larry learning about that part of Texas and how it related to the QA&P. The QA&P's main sources of revenue were cotton and cotton oil, gypsum based products and cattle. Today we learned quite a bit about the cattle portion of the railroad business. At Acme, TX there is a drywall or what we call sheetrock plant, and later, automobile rack cars unloading at Floydada, TX. Larry and Sammie have lived near Paducah for their entire lives. Larry is 80 but does not look it, and has been in ranch related business since being a child. According to Larry, there was an extremely large set of cattle pens just north of the Paducah depot where the Triangle Ranch drove their cattle to be shipped. The Triangle Ranch was, at one time, about 200,000 acres and one of the major ranches in this part of Texas. Three of the other large ranches here were the Matador Ranch, 6666 - called Four Sixes, and the Pitchfork Ranch. Each of these ranches was larger than the Triangle Ranch. These three ranches drove their cattle to Narcisso, TX, a large set of cattle pens on the QA&P's property west of Paducah. Narcisso is now on private property, but there is nothing left of the railroad's presence there. The locals all called it Narcissi. One of the most interesting things there was a roll-out draftsman's depiction of the line between Paducah and Roaring Springs. I do not know what the proper name is of the thing. It was on a roll of manila-like cover stock paper that was about 30" wide and maybe 20' long. The scale was 1" = 200'. It showed the line, every curve, etc., including topo lines, all the way between the two towns. Below are a few photographs of QA&P locomotives that are on the wall in the depot museum. Also, a shot of Maggie-the-dog awaiting the next train. ATTACH=full]44208[/ATTACH]
