FEC KWE: Homestead

Florida City looked to be quite an industrious city back in the Railroad's heyday there. Even though FEC in the end probably ran there at a loss, there were still numerous warehouses open to traffic and it seemed like it could have brought in dollars for the RR. Many warehouses with freight doors still stand there today and the only evidence left of the ROW south of Kendall stands between Palm Drive and Krome, while the rest has been absorbed to that evil busway.

Hence, I took that all into consideration when designing the trackwork for this area. And I am still not done.

There may be provisions for CSX to have switching rights here while FEC is responsible for their Card Sound intermodal ramp down south.

FEC Key West Extension - Boca Chica Key

I know this is mainly a CSX blog but the FEC route I'm doing of the twist in history is big stuff and I feel adapting it to this blog will be beneficial and not quite off base.

I learned a rather arbitrary history lesson. According to Google Maps, by the arrangement of the tree line, the portion of the railroad does not appear to follow US-1 like the virtual sim does... but it caves into the NAS Key West reserve base.

As such, I am relocating the FEC main back to there. Expect only good out of this; yes I wasted a few days landscaping an interchange with US-1 (that for the most part exists today) but by connecting the railroad to the base, we're opening up a number of logistical opportunities.

The old alignment is shown to the top. The newer and probably more historically accurate one stands on the bottom. What's just so nice is the additional switching challenges opened up with this realignment.

Unit ethanol trains can now come in and work the bays on the west side. General freight, high-and-wides, and military equipment can move in as well. 

Points of interest:

• Boca Chica passing siding was moved to the east of this island. Even though it is not in Boca Chica Key anymore, it keeps the name since it sounds interesting.
• Double distant signal east of the entrance road to NAS Key West. 
• Power-Assisted turnout at the NAS leads. For sure, there'll be a switch leading out to Key West. Pending is a switch from the east.

 

As can be seen here, the old alignment was officially pulled up and the tracks that carried virtual FEC trains for five years are no longer on line and gone from the system.

One nice thing about working here is it allows me to expand upon areas only partially done by Nikos. For instance, the swing bridge was done but of course a whole lot of area on either side has been partly complete. Hence I'm working to landscape the sections through to complete the areas.

Another interesting thing about this is once all the work is said and done, the track snaps right in with the existing continuing sections of the mainline. So it is possible to say this was once a part of Flagler's Folly; but the history buffs know better.