Drove from Miami area to Key West last weekend. Got a good look at the FEC’s original bridges hopscotching from island to island. Some really impressive stuff! Got me thinking about how they operated the line. Was it a single division or was there a division point somewhere? Why a RR camp right in the middle of 7 mile bridge a tiny little island - Pigeon Key? Why not on an adjacent, larger key? How’d they water the engines? Did they run water trains down and pump into water tanks? Did they carry water tenders with each train good for a round trip? They ran a car ferry from Key West to Cuba. Were the Cuban RRs part of (what is now) the AAR? What did the FEC do after the 1935 storm to service Cuba - Ferry from the Miami area? How long did this last? Anybody have any answers?
----and there are no photographs?[sigh][:(]
Was there any sign of the tower foundations? I’m thinking that there had to be some kind of water towers or service areas but—?
I can answer some bits, operated as one division south of Miami. The camp on Pigeon Key was a construction camp , more centrally located for construction of Seven-mile Bridge. After the 1935 storm the ferries operated from the Port of Palm Beach, until Castro took control of Cuba.
Thanks. I was also wondering about the speeds on the division, particurlary over some of the bridges. Most don’t appear to have had opening spans, so I would suspect decent speeds. Anybody know what the maximum authorized speeds were?
Photo of 1st train approaching Key West 1912
http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/pan/6a03000/6a03100/6a03112r.jpg
Photo of 1st train at Key West 1912
http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/pan/6a03000/6a03100/6a03127r.jpg
Photo of a train on Knight’s Key Bridge
http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/fl/fl0200/fl0293/photos/053096pv.jpg
Articles
http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r053.html
http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/flkeys.Html
Did have a chance to drive the route out to Key West back in the late 60’s, and enjoyed the chance to see the route that the Hurricane took down {some parts of it}, and of course then later reconstructed as rt. 1 auto route.
Remember it was rather narrow, of course just two lanes…and believe I remember the railing on the bridges {at least some of them}, was constructed of railroad rail…
Edit: Just remembered…thinking back on that drive out there…I saw a rusty rail sticking up out of the water…Yes, it was twisted.
Prior to the Great Depression, was the Key West extension profitable?
Good stuff! Thanks for posting.
I’m just guessing here, don’t have any inside knowledge. From an operational standpoint, probably so. The line and bridges were relatively new even at the time of destruction, so maintenance shouldn’t have been too heavy a burden. However, once you add in the depreciation on the millions the extension cost I seriously doubt it would have been profitable.
An earlier poster asked if FEC ran water cars to supply its locomotives and stations. At first they ran water trains to supply Key West, so they probably added however many cars they needed for their own operations. Later I believe Key West built a pipeline attached to the RR structures, so the RR probably tapped into that.
Corrections welcome from anyone with actual knowledge.
See also the References and External Links at the end of the Wikipedia article on this, at - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Railroad - one of which is
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2004/4/2004_4_54.shtml
Also the following books - this may not be all of them:
http://www.amazon.com/Flaglers-Folly-Railroad-That-Blown/dp/0961470224 = Flagler’s Folly: The Railroad That Went to Sea and Was Blown Away, Rodman J. Bethel, 1987
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Train-Paradise-Spectacular-Railroad/dp/1400049474/ref=pd_cp_b_0 = Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean (Paperback), Les Standiford, 2003
http://www.amazon.com/Floridas-Great-Ocean-Railway-Extension/dp/156164269X/ref=pd_cp_b_1 = Florida’s Great Ocean Railway: Building the Key West Extension, Dan Gallagher, 2003
One of the original water towers ended up, intact, behind the Blue Heaven Restaurant in Key West.
Scrimshaw Jimm- Welcome to Trains.com! [C):-)]