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Texas Transportation Company

Open-knowledge reference entry

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 12, 2025
Entity authorityQ7708191 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Texas Transportation Company (reporting mark TXTC) was an electrified, Class III, short-line railroad in San Antonio, Texas, that operated from 1897 until 2001. It served the Pearl Brewery and several other businesses, moving carloads between those businesses and the Southern Pacific yard. Service ended on June 30, 2000, shortly before the Pabst Brewing Company closed the Pearl Brewery, in early 2001.

History

The Texas Transportation Company was founded in 1887 as a private company. It was chartered on September 24, 1897. It served more than 20 customers at its peak, including the Lone Star Brewing Company and the Pearl Brewery. Gross annual operating revenue in 1956 was $80,000. It was designated a Common Carrier in 1932.

By 1990, the 1.1-mile (1.8 km) line was one of only three "trolley freight" railroads still in operation in the United States, along with Iowa Traction Railroad and the East Troy Electric Railroad, but by that time, the Pearl Brewery was its sole remaining regular customer. Another customer, Samuel's Glass Company, called on TXTC to move a load of finished plate glass from its spur on Newell Street only "once in a great while".

Editorial summary

“Texas Transportation Company” enters the record as open-knowledge reference entry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Texas, Transportation and Company can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1897, 2001, 2000, 1887—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Texas, Transportation and Company.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Texas Transportation Company” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Texas, Transportation and Company provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7708191. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1897, 2001, 2000 and 1887.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Texas Transportation Company”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Texas Transportation Company primary sources, Texas Transportation Company archive and Texas research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Texas Transportation Company” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.